Off topic? Interesting. Neverwinter Nights allows you to set up your own virtual world that allows you to link portals to other NWN worlds. If a world you're linked to goes down, then that portal is blacked out, at least until it comes back up. It sounds almost exactly like this service, except both useful and fun.
The main differences are: 1) NWN doesn't have a central server that links all the worlds together. You have to get together with the owners of the other worlds in order to link. 2) BrendanLand doesn't have all of the interesting things that NWN has. NWN has better graphics, a more complete physics engine, and you can do things that aren't just chat. 3) BrendanLand seems to require you to have your own section of the world. NWN doesn't. 4) BrendanLand is free. NWN is commercial. 5) BrendanLand seems to have no plans for Linux or Mac, NWN has both in the near future.
Consequently...what we have here is Neverwinter Nights with no gameplay, is it? Woo woo!
This was originally meant to be Mac, Linux, and Windows versions all on one disc with concurrent development cycles (more or less). My guess is that they had too many platform-specific engine issues, and it would have delayed their windows release to work on those. Once the product's finished, the original team members are probably going to be reassigned to various other projects according to their studio schedule. Thus, rather than tying up the team members on bug fixes, they probably decided to farm it out to MacPlay.
The reason they decided to finish Windows first rather than the mac has nothing to do with ease of development. The reason would be because they will have more sales on the windows platform than the Mac or Linux combined, so that's what they chose to finish.
I have no insider knowledge about Bioware or this particular situation. I do know quite a bit about game development, and I have released a product on Windows and Mac on a single hybrid disc, so I have made some pretty good guesses.
If you have an OS9 PPD for the HP LaserJet III, try adding the printer OS X using that PPD. If it connects in a way that OS X supports (i.e. not serial), then you will probably be able to use the LaserJet III. I've had success using that method for several printers that haven't explicitly supported OS X.
Could you please provide a link to the GNU/Linux binaries for IE? Oh, wait, by UNIX you mean Solaris...and of course, Solaris is taking over the desktop market.
I should mention, at severe risk to the little karma that I have, that I don't think that Linux is the dominant desktop unix platform, either. I believe it's Mac OS X, which does have IE binaries.
Of course, I use OmniWeb whenever I can, but perhaps I'll check out Mozilla now that it's done.
I thought KaZaa just gave you viruses(virii??) and adware?
Had I known you could get sheep...
Sheep are freely available on Kazaa, but their wool has been replaced by pop-up ads (they're on springs), and sadly, they are usually infested with virii. But that's to be expected when you go around sharing sheep with strangers.
BTW everquest is not a game, in a game there is a winner and a loser, the only winner in EQ is the people who get your money.
I see you read PVP, and aren't afraid to quote for your posts.
However, despite the fact that your opinion surfaced in a major web comic, the view is not at all true. Game theory defines a game as a set of rules specifying:
Players
Alternative choices/actions players choose from
Order of play
Outcomes and payoffs
Everquest, and other MMORPGs, generally cover each of these in order to work. It's an open system, meaning that players can make their own goals in addition to those imposed by the game, rather than having a closed, or finite, resolution.
You can find a lot more about Game Theory, including information various types of games from Zero Sum to Nonconstant sum games and the like here.
There's something to be said for not interrupting the production environment unnecessarily. If you have to put out a weekly or daily publication, then you really don't want anything that's going to cause a serious delay. You have to test everything to make sure it works, and you have to give your production people enough time to train and become proficient before you force them to switch over. Otherwise, you might not have a paper come the next week.
More and more Presses are accepting PDF files these days, so it's not as big of an issue if they don't carry InDesign. More troublesome is if you receive ads from clients that are in Quark, and you have to maintain both programs (and, consequently, both environments), just to be able to accept the ads.
Also, there's the consideration of the various plugins (or XTensions, if you are speaking specifically of Quark), as well as applescripts and the like. You lose whatever you had for customized workflow when you switch, so there has to be time to get everything working in a reasonably similar manner before you switch. If you have a database driven workflow, breaking that is seriously going to suck. On the other hand, chances are that Quark will only upgrade 5 to OS X, not 4, so it will break all of the plugins anyways.
Finally, there's the budget. In my case, I'm not going to be able to afford all of the upgrades until next year, chances are. I'm not in a big rush to go to OS X, but it's definitely in the plans. I want to stop the computer from crashing. If an app drops out here and there, no big deal, but if I can reduce the number of restarts per day to close to 0, then I will consider that a huge win. The question is, which will be the better program when it's time to switch? Even given my time frame, I bet it'll be InDesign.
In addition, 4.0 and newer browsers support Portable Network Graphics (PNG).
I'm afraid this statement isn't true, at least on a Mac. A OS9 Macintosh uses the Quicktime plugin in order to render PNGs. An out-of-the-box configuration doesn't have everything linked up in order to view it properly. Granted, it doesn't affect a lot of people, but I want my web pages to be viewed by the highest possible audience. Not because I get a lot of traffic, but because the people who do visit are usually compatibility snobs. Heh.
Of course, for the commercial web sites I work on, compatibility is definitely a top priority, so it'll continue to be JPG and GIF. "Don't see any pictures? Download Quicktime Here!" is a good way to lose traffic.
Yeah, some kids in my dorm did this. They had heard that DaVinci did it or something. It went for a few days, until they overslept and nothing at all would wake them. They only missed a few classes.
In 6 years, people probably won't be able to remember any of the console games (except for the FF series, which is pretty distintive), and few people will actually play them.
You're kidding, right? Let's start with Yars Revenge. The Mario series(es), including Bros, Cart, Smash Brothers. Zelda. Virtua Fighter. Tekken. FlipOut! (Okay, nobody will remember that one.) Pong. Pac Man. Shenmue.
And that's just a random sampling of the past 20 years of console gaming based on the barest amount of free association.
Don't let your personal biases overshadow the fact that consoles have been significantly more successful than PC games, and contain at least as rabid of fans.
Ah, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Active Buddy allow parents to prohibit them from collecting information about children, and gives the parents information on blocking the bot's IDs on AIM. From their site (in an easy to find link):
Children's Privacy Policy
ActiveBuddy, Inc. takes the privacy of children very seriously.
ActiveBuddy interactive agents do not collect contact information from users identified as children under age 13 without prior parental consent or direct parental notification of the nature and intended use of this information, which shall include an opportunity for the parent to prevent use of the information and participation in the activity. This online contact information shall only be used to directly respond to the child's request and shall not be used to re-contact the child for other purposes without prior parental consent.
We do not distribute to third parties any individually identifiable information collected from a user identified as a child under age 13 without prior parental consent.
We do not give the ability to users identified as children under age 13 to publicly post or otherwise distribute individually identifiable contact information without prior parental consent.
We will not entice a user identified as a child under age 13 by the prospect of a special game, prize or other activity, to divulge more information than is needed to participate in that activity.
Parents of children below age 13, click here to view our Notice to Parents or Guardians.
Also, for the people who neglected to check, whenever you IM a bot, it clearly identifies its botness (or bottitude, if you prefer).
Me: Yo
LindsayBuddy: Hi! i'm LindsayBuddy, an interactive agent built by Activebuddy, Inc.
Let's chat. i like to talk about this great young singer i know, Lindsay Pagano... and lots of other things!
By the way... Lindsay's debut album, "Love&Faith&Inspiration," is in stores December 18th, 2001!
Please type "home" right now so we can get started.
Short of it actually IMing the phrase "I am not a human being", it's hard to see how this can be more clear. The only think I don't know is if it randomly initiates conversation without identifying itself. I suppose I'll find that out soon enough.
This is the response from the CEO, quoted at the end of the article:
ActiveBuddy CEO Responds
To the Editor:
We build tools for companies to develop interactive agents to serve their customers (adults and teens, etc.). We are proud that among the things our customers have built are an agent to engage teens in conversations about smoking and how bad it is. And you seem to have come across LindsayBuddy, an agent built to deliver information about a 15-year old recording artist, and agent with nothing but nice things to say, and like SmarterChild, no tolerance for rude behavior.
Yes, LindsayBuddy was built to "promote" a musician. But in the case of an interactive agent, a person chooses to interact with and engage this "promotional" property; which I believe is far less disingenuous than television programs, which insert (or should I write "impose") advertising within programming material.
Would you rather your child engaged in an IM session with a stranger who found their screen name in a chat room, or with a friendly, well-mannered "bot" that plays by rules of propriety too often ignored in today's world of crass media overload, seeking audience regardless of the cost to morals and proper social behavior?
-- Respectfully, Stephen D. Klein, CEO, ActiveBuddy, Inc.
Fie, I say. 55 is an acceptable number, as long as the random sample is unbiased and representative. The question is, did they manage an unbiased and representative random sample?
There is a difference between the list you mention and spam. Not a moral nor legal difference, but one of practicality. It costs people money and time to print flyers, broadcast television commercials, or send mail. If you want to reach a wider audience, you have to spend more money and/or time. With spam, this is not the case. Once you have a database of names, you can send out as much spam as you want with virtually no extra cost. Practically none compared to any of the methods you mention. Thus, other forms of advertising are somewhat self-regulating.
Do I think that makes a difference in this case? I dunno. But it is something to be considered.
They played it on the Sci-Fi channel already. It was on a late night show (the one where they play sci-fi shorts submitted from a variety of sources). They had to censor a few words, and they definitely reduced the resolution of a certain character's nether-region, but for the most part, it was there.
Nah. Closer inspection reveals that he probably worked for Worldplay. Kesmai was never bought by AOL, they were bought by EA. OTOH, Worldplay had a very robust set of card games and were owned by AOL, who eventually passed control of Worldplay to EA.
There is still a tiny pocket of Kesmai left, though Kesmai Studios is no more. The Flight Deck and Murderer's Row is still there, as is the Castle. It's just the Catacombs, the Woods, and the Stables that are gone. I don't know if you remember any of the area names, but there you have it.
It is a shame about the studios, but I suppose I'm biased.
2) You'll obviously have to identify yourself to pay for downloadable content, which is absolutely unprecedented. The only content consumers who are currently violated (in the most personal sense of the word) in this way are those who sign up for the privilege of participating in The Ratings. What's to stop them from using my personal information for marketing or whatever? There are huge privacy concerns that no one in congress is addressing.
All right, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but the "unprecedented" bit seems completely incorrect. From traditional media (i.e. television), Pay-Per-View requires that you identify yourself, or at least your household, in order to download content. Then, of course, there's the omnipresent pornography on the internet (or what the kids like to call 'porn', I'm told), which usually requires some sort of credit card payment, which is usually a good way to identify someone.
Will DRM allow a screen grab? If it won't, then they've violated fair use (I think, IANAL)
IANAL, either, but my understanding is that fair use does not require that the media distributors make it easy nor possible to make a copy for fair purposes, it simply says that they cannot successfully sue you if you have made a copy that follows the guidelines set out by the fair use laws.
I also wonder if maybe Blizzard's time and energies might be put to better use by focusing on things like Realm stability, and getting rid of the cheaters that are bringing the realms down, looking for the next duping method.
What, you think the engineers and Customer service people are going to be working hard on the legal battle? The budgets for legal and programming are very likely not linked, and aside from a few questions that the lawyers may have for the purposes of making a case, and the occasional participation on/. and in lunchtime chats, it's probably not going to affect the programming staff.
Unless, of course, they are going to make the server identification better to try to prevent such things in the future, but that's not what we're discussing. So far, it's all legal.
I've been reading eBooks since I owned a Newton 100 (The Hacker Crackdown was my first). It's extremely handy, for several reasons:
1) I can carry around many books in the space of a PDA (currently a Palm);
2) You can read the book with one hand (get your mind out of the gutter) - I can hold the palm in one hand and turn the pages with my thumb on the scroll button. Sure, it's not much, but that's just that little bit of convenience that paperbacks don't have;
3) Low light conditions - I can just turn on the backlight, and I have an instant built-in reading light;
4) It goes where I do - since I keep the Palm with me, it's always right there if I happen to have a few minutes or more free and I didn't think (or feel like) bringing my book.
However, I have no need of a specialized eBook reader nor Adobe's format. I buy my books and magazines from Palm Digital Media (used to be Peanut Press) at http://www.peanutpress.com/ They have a decent if not overwhelmingly complete selection, they don't overcharge, and everything's quick and easy. I'm not going to give up on paper books any time soon, if ever, but I have easily integrated eBooks into my life.
Slashdot Mirror
Off topic? Interesting. Neverwinter Nights allows you to set up your own virtual world that allows you to link portals to other NWN worlds. If a world you're linked to goes down, then that portal is blacked out, at least until it comes back up. It sounds almost exactly like this service, except both useful and fun.
The main differences are:
1) NWN doesn't have a central server that links all the worlds together. You have to get together with the owners of the other worlds in order to link.
2) BrendanLand doesn't have all of the interesting things that NWN has. NWN has better graphics, a more complete physics engine, and you can do things that aren't just chat.
3) BrendanLand seems to require you to have your own section of the world. NWN doesn't.
4) BrendanLand is free. NWN is commercial.
5) BrendanLand seems to have no plans for Linux or Mac, NWN has both in the near future.
Consequently...what we have here is Neverwinter Nights with no gameplay, is it? Woo woo!
With luck, perhaps this can be modded down, too.
=Brian
So what we have here is Neverwinter Nights with no gameplay, is it? Woo woo!
=Brian
This was originally meant to be Mac, Linux, and Windows versions all on one disc with concurrent development cycles (more or less). My guess is that they had too many platform-specific engine issues, and it would have delayed their windows release to work on those. Once the product's finished, the original team members are probably going to be reassigned to various other projects according to their studio schedule. Thus, rather than tying up the team members on bug fixes, they probably decided to farm it out to MacPlay.
The reason they decided to finish Windows first rather than the mac has nothing to do with ease of development. The reason would be because they will have more sales on the windows platform than the Mac or Linux combined, so that's what they chose to finish.
I have no insider knowledge about Bioware or this particular situation. I do know quite a bit about game development, and I have released a product on Windows and Mac on a single hybrid disc, so I have made some pretty good guesses.
=Brian
If you have an OS9 PPD for the HP LaserJet III, try adding the printer OS X using that PPD. If it connects in a way that OS X supports (i.e. not serial), then you will probably be able to use the LaserJet III. I've had success using that method for several printers that haven't explicitly supported OS X.
=Brian
I should mention, at severe risk to the little karma that I have, that I don't think that Linux is the dominant desktop unix platform, either. I believe it's Mac OS X, which does have IE binaries.
Of course, I use OmniWeb whenever I can, but perhaps I'll check out Mozilla now that it's done.
=Brian
Sheep are freely available on Kazaa, but their wool has been replaced by pop-up ads (they're on springs), and sadly, they are usually infested with virii. But that's to be expected when you go around sharing sheep with strangers.
=Brian
"We don't want any fried ./ers"
/.ers. Or perhaps I've said too much.
I believe you mean any *more* fried
=Brian
"We were making science, your honor."
I see you read PVP, and aren't afraid to quote for your posts.
However, despite the fact that your opinion surfaced in a major web comic, the view is not at all true. Game theory defines a game as a set of rules specifying:
Everquest, and other MMORPGs, generally cover each of these in order to work. It's an open system, meaning that players can make their own goals in addition to those imposed by the game, rather than having a closed, or finite, resolution.
You can find a lot more about Game Theory, including information various types of games from Zero Sum to Nonconstant sum games and the like here.
=Brian
More and more Presses are accepting PDF files these days, so it's not as big of an issue if they don't carry InDesign. More troublesome is if you receive ads from clients that are in Quark, and you have to maintain both programs (and, consequently, both environments), just to be able to accept the ads.
Also, there's the consideration of the various plugins (or XTensions, if you are speaking specifically of Quark), as well as applescripts and the like. You lose whatever you had for customized workflow when you switch, so there has to be time to get everything working in a reasonably similar manner before you switch. If you have a database driven workflow, breaking that is seriously going to suck. On the other hand, chances are that Quark will only upgrade 5 to OS X, not 4, so it will break all of the plugins anyways.
Finally, there's the budget. In my case, I'm not going to be able to afford all of the upgrades until next year, chances are. I'm not in a big rush to go to OS X, but it's definitely in the plans. I want to stop the computer from crashing. If an app drops out here and there, no big deal, but if I can reduce the number of restarts per day to close to 0, then I will consider that a huge win. The question is, which will be the better program when it's time to switch? Even given my time frame, I bet it'll be InDesign.
=Brian
I'm afraid this statement isn't true, at least on a Mac. A OS9 Macintosh uses the Quicktime plugin in order to render PNGs. An out-of-the-box configuration doesn't have everything linked up in order to view it properly. Granted, it doesn't affect a lot of people, but I want my web pages to be viewed by the highest possible audience. Not because I get a lot of traffic, but because the people who do visit are usually compatibility snobs. Heh.
Of course, for the commercial web sites I work on, compatibility is definitely a top priority, so it'll continue to be JPG and GIF. "Don't see any pictures? Download Quicktime Here!" is a good way to lose traffic.
=Brian
Yeah, some kids in my dorm did this. They had heard that DaVinci did it or something. It went for a few days, until they overslept and nothing at all would wake them. They only missed a few classes.
=Brian
You're kidding, right? Let's start with Yars Revenge. The Mario series(es), including Bros, Cart, Smash Brothers. Zelda. Virtua Fighter. Tekken. FlipOut! (Okay, nobody will remember that one.) Pong. Pac Man. Shenmue.
And that's just a random sampling of the past 20 years of console gaming based on the barest amount of free association.
Don't let your personal biases overshadow the fact that consoles have been significantly more successful than PC games, and contain at least as rabid of fans.
=Brian
Also, for the people who neglected to check, whenever you IM a bot, it clearly identifies its botness (or bottitude, if you prefer).
Short of it actually IMing the phrase "I am not a human being", it's hard to see how this can be more clear. The only think I don't know is if it randomly initiates conversation without identifying itself. I suppose I'll find that out soon enough.
=Brian
=Brian
Fie, I say. 55 is an acceptable number, as long as the random sample is unbiased and representative. The question is, did they manage an unbiased and representative random sample?
=Brian
Aside from the people who point out that it's not necessarily under public domain, the article mentions:
=Brian
...an external Firewire hard drive, which may or may not be an iPod.
=Brian
There is a difference between the list you mention and spam. Not a moral nor legal difference, but one of practicality. It costs people money and time to print flyers, broadcast television commercials, or send mail. If you want to reach a wider audience, you have to spend more money and/or time. With spam, this is not the case. Once you have a database of names, you can send out as much spam as you want with virtually no extra cost. Practically none compared to any of the methods you mention. Thus, other forms of advertising are somewhat self-regulating.
Do I think that makes a difference in this case? I dunno. But it is something to be considered.
=Brian
They played it on the Sci-Fi channel already. It was on a late night show (the one where they play sci-fi shorts submitted from a variety of sources). They had to censor a few words, and they definitely reduced the resolution of a certain character's nether-region, but for the most part, it was there.
=Brian
Not quite as easy as the VCR+ idea, but a step in that direction.
Plus, it cooks with light! How retro-2001 of them.
=Brian
Nah. Closer inspection reveals that he probably worked for Worldplay. Kesmai was never bought by AOL, they were bought by EA. OTOH, Worldplay had a very robust set of card games and were owned by AOL, who eventually passed control of Worldplay to EA.
There is still a tiny pocket of Kesmai left, though Kesmai Studios is no more. The Flight Deck and Murderer's Row is still there, as is the Castle. It's just the Catacombs, the Woods, and the Stables that are gone. I don't know if you remember any of the area names, but there you have it.
It is a shame about the studios, but I suppose I'm biased.
=Brian
All right, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but the "unprecedented" bit seems completely incorrect. From traditional media (i.e. television), Pay-Per-View requires that you identify yourself, or at least your household, in order to download content. Then, of course, there's the omnipresent pornography on the internet (or what the kids like to call 'porn', I'm told), which usually requires some sort of credit card payment, which is usually a good way to identify someone.
=Brian
IANAL, either, but my understanding is that fair use does not require that the media distributors make it easy nor possible to make a copy for fair purposes, it simply says that they cannot successfully sue you if you have made a copy that follows the guidelines set out by the fair use laws.
=Brian
What, you think the engineers and Customer service people are going to be working hard on the legal battle? The budgets for legal and programming are very likely not linked, and aside from a few questions that the lawyers may have for the purposes of making a case, and the occasional participation on
Unless, of course, they are going to make the server identification better to try to prevent such things in the future, but that's not what we're discussing. So far, it's all legal.
=Brian
1) I can carry around many books in the space of a PDA (currently a Palm);
2) You can read the book with one hand (get your mind out of the gutter) - I can hold the palm in one hand and turn the pages with my thumb on the scroll button. Sure, it's not much, but that's just that little bit of convenience that paperbacks don't have;
3) Low light conditions - I can just turn on the backlight, and I have an instant built-in reading light;
4) It goes where I do - since I keep the Palm with me, it's always right there if I happen to have a few minutes or more free and I didn't think (or feel like) bringing my book.
However, I have no need of a specialized eBook reader nor Adobe's format. I buy my books and magazines from Palm Digital Media (used to be Peanut Press) at http://www.peanutpress.com/ They have a decent if not overwhelmingly complete selection, they don't overcharge, and everything's quick and easy. I'm not going to give up on paper books any time soon, if ever, but I have easily integrated eBooks into my life.
=Brian