I havent' RTFA yet and I will after my meeting, but I had to comment:
When I wrote my master's thesis, "Virtual Historiography: How History Is Presented in Games Designed for Entertainment," one of the problems I had was that many history "simulations" were written by non-historians. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing because they were, of course, designed for entertainment! Playing a game is a two way street: you'll get as much history out of it as you want in order to be entertained, and it's limited by how much history the game designer puts into it. "History" in this context is an elastic quantity, but a quantity nonetheless because of there sheer logical/compuational limitations of digital technology. The "bias" found in most games sometimes do reflect ideological biases (for example, Wil Wright's emphasis on public transportation in the SimCity series), but more often than not, it's an editorial process that's bound by the limits of the machine and development time. Bias is unavoidable. You leave certain things in because it adds to the verisimilitude of reality yet at the same time, you leave things out that take away from the entertainment factor of the game (most aspects of reality are BORING!). When it comes down to it, in terms of my research, historical bias is unavoidable, and for games designed for entertainment, the bias goes towards entertainment/gameplay first, verisimilitude of reality second, and then education. Bottomline: It's plain commonsense: you can't learn history from a computer game that sucks.
As someone who went to Nextfest, I partially agree with your post: there does seem to be a lull in innovation lately. Don't get me wrong, there were some cool things there, but nothing unexpected or revolutionary.(e.g. a company was showcasing their game called Kick Ass Kung Foo: a camera and collision detection system put you in the game fighting the likes of Bruce Lee and President bush. It wasn't showcasing cutting edge technology. BUT, it was cool and lots of fun!)
However, I do think there's a point to NextFest and that's to see these things and judge them for yourself. You can also talk to the creators and get some interesting insights into the design and significance of their tech (or to judge whether their full of b.s.).
I really think it would have been much better if they had more academics representing their work than corporations (but corp. is where the money is coming from I guess). All I saw was Ohio State's electric dragster, a bit from MIT's Media Lab, and a cool dome VR unit from a university in Montreal. Oh, and a group of students from Japan had a cool poker table.
I don't know about your Corsicant thesis, but I'm pretty sure that R2 is Force attuned, and I'm too lazy to find the link, but Lucas has stated that R2 is the true hero of the series.
If you look at the shots, the suns were, from Luke's point of view, close together (one was smaller to denote that it was quite a bit of distance away from the other), and I would think that the duel shadow would be almost nonexistant because the brighther light source drowned out the shadow caused by the weaker sun--although it did produce some awfully hot days on ol' Tatooine. It's so dry there, you have to farm for moisture!
Re:Can the Death Star travel at lightspeed?
on
The Science of Star Wars
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Yes it did! From what I read, it did have a hyperdrive, but was on the slow end of the sprectrum (although going faster than light can't be considered slow...unless we're talking Ludicrous Speed!) as hyperdrives go in the SW universe. If I remember the first novelation correctly, it took the Death Star a while to get to Yavin but not too long for the Rebels to evacuate. But the added time allowed the Alliance to analyze the Death Star and mount an effective attack.
If you watch Ep. IV, you do get the hint that the Death Star is moving during certain shots, but since it was in space (and due to a limited budget, I bet)there were not many landmarks to measure relative speed.
would an obvious suggestion to meet women get modded "informative."
Priceless.
Remember, when she's having trouble with her wireless connection...that's when you make your move! (and she doesn't have any problems, you can interfere with her signal...)
(to Karma whore: the laundromat, grocery store, and park are also non-bar places to meet women...thank you! I expect a +5 in ten minutes! ha!)
Maybe when Anakin was redeemed then dies in ROTJ, Yoda and Obi-Wan are doing all the Force work for Anakin... In one of the books (it might not be considered kosher now), it talks about how a jedi can make an impression on another living jedi right before they die--and since Luke sees Obi-wan, Yoda, and Anakin die, they have a Force impression on him and can appear to Luke at will.
What does this have to do with hacking at all? An introduction to playing MMORPG's has no place in this at all.
Well, hold on for a sec. There's several hacks one could learn about in MMRPG's which are worth writing about:
1st: the macros. Writing a macro can be intimidating to non-tech types (especially, if you've come over from the console genre of gaming). Even though syntax differs from game to game, it's an important thing to a) know about and b) learn if you're going to play well (and boy, does it help with grinding).
2nd: Playing well with others. One thing MMRPG's do well is simulating social networks and this leads to making sure you know the "syntax" of social interaction. In effect,he's talking about a social hack. If you want to tinker with your MMRPG experience, then social hacking is a necessity!
I applaud this authors attempt at expanding the meaning of "hack" to include such things as social hacks.
But the spoiler is explaining HOW (and WHY) those events you described happens! We know WHAT happens and now we will see a lot of the HOW and WHY in ROTS. And Kevin reveals a lot about the HOW (like command 66 or something) and WHY: in my book, that's a spoiler!
Very true! And contrast that with the love story between Han and Leia in Empire...it didn't overtake the story because it was evenly spread over the entire film: with the sexual tension between the two on Hoth, the tension while navigating the astroid field, the kiss while repairing the Falcon (and C3-P0's interuption was BRILLIANT), the kiss on the cheek after escaping the Star Destroyer, the kinda into each other/are we dating? scene in Cloud City (originally, they kissed in that scene--it's where Leia says she doesn't trust Lando, fyi), and of course, the I love you/I know scene. FANTASTIC! Not too much, but it really was a wonderful love story!
Clearly, he wouldn't have panned it: no one who has so much tied into Hollywood's production side would have openly panned it before it came out. BUT, what matters is how effusive he is when writing about it: and Kevin doesn't hold back.
I would be MORE concerned if a) Kevin wrote nothing about ROTS after the screening or b) gave it a positive, but not glowing review where we would have been emphasizing what he didn't say about the film. Either scenario would have been more telling!
Exactly: he said he didn't recall owning the droids and did not preclude any other relationship. It was Sir Alec's great acting (his demeanour was very "cagey" when he met Luke) that allows Lucas to exploit this relationship/statement/loophole and have it hold true!
Yes! Someone would be interested in company X's records! A lot of good history is done with business records: look at Cronan's Nature's Metropolis about the history of Chicago. And let me bring it back to the digital world: I talked to Pop Top software while I was working on my thesis about how computer games present history, and they used old records/manifests from railroad companies in the 19th and 20th century to make Railroad Tycoon!
My Sandisk 1gb flash player was bought at ecost.com and last week they were $129 (I think newegg has it for 145): It has a mic, fm reciever, and display. Its interface is ok, the shuffle function isn't perfect (it numbers the files, and seems the prefer the 1st file), but I'm still happy with it!
Is the motion sensor sensitive enough to navigate/play while it's in your lap, or as I fear, you have to pick it up and tilt it. Even if the laptop is 3 or maybe 4 lbs, after a while, it's going to tire your muscles. However, I do appreciate this hack because it's using something in a way that it wasn't intended to on top of working well (minus muscle fatigue).
I bought a Sandisk MP3 player so that I can watch TV (if there's something interestingon) while I workout at the gym. Dave's Ipaq had a good breakdown...I believe ecost has the 1 gb version for $120!
It's a quality player, it has a display, works just like a flash drive (although you use a cable to attach it to your comp's usb 2.0 port), and it also has a microphone. It's not as easy to use as an ipod, and it's shuffle feature seems to prefer the first file (it numbers the files) for some reason. But all in all, it's a better buy than the shuffle if you're in my situtation!
(From the Democratic Socialist website)
As the Socialist Party's standard-bearer twelve years later, [Eugene Debs] won nearly a million votes, some 6 percent of the total. In some states, such as Oklahoma, Washington, and California, the Socialist share of the vote climbed into the double digits. Over the same twelve-year period, the Socialist Party expanded its membership from 10,000 to nearly 120,000. Twelve hundred of these Socialists were elected to public office across the United States, including mayors from Flint, Butte, and Berkeley.
Representative Sanders from Vermont was also a socialist I believe (but this is a modern example and not as valid as socialists elected at the last turn of the century...)
(Especially late 19th and early 20th before 1918, socialist and communist are almost interchangable and not to be confused with Bolsheviks)
Slashdot Mirror
I havent' RTFA yet and I will after my meeting, but I had to comment:
When I wrote my master's thesis, "Virtual Historiography: How History Is Presented in Games Designed for Entertainment," one of the problems I had was that many history "simulations" were written by non-historians. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing because they were, of course, designed for entertainment! Playing a game is a two way street: you'll get as much history out of it as you want in order to be entertained, and it's limited by how much history the game designer puts into it. "History" in this context is an elastic quantity, but a quantity nonetheless because of there sheer logical/compuational limitations of digital technology. The "bias" found in most games sometimes do reflect ideological biases (for example, Wil Wright's emphasis on public transportation in the SimCity series), but more often than not, it's an editorial process that's bound by the limits of the machine and development time. Bias is unavoidable. You leave certain things in because it adds to the verisimilitude of reality yet at the same time, you leave things out that take away from the entertainment factor of the game (most aspects of reality are BORING!). When it comes down to it, in terms of my research, historical bias is unavoidable, and for games designed for entertainment, the bias goes towards entertainment/gameplay first, verisimilitude of reality second, and then education. Bottomline: It's plain commonsense: you can't learn history from a computer game that sucks.
As someone who went to Nextfest, I partially agree with your post: there does seem to be a lull in innovation lately. Don't get me wrong, there were some cool things there, but nothing unexpected or revolutionary.(e.g. a company was showcasing their game called Kick Ass Kung Foo: a camera and collision detection system put you in the game fighting the likes of Bruce Lee and President bush. It wasn't showcasing cutting edge technology. BUT, it was cool and lots of fun!)
However, I do think there's a point to NextFest and that's to see these things and judge them for yourself. You can also talk to the creators and get some interesting insights into the design and significance of their tech (or to judge whether their full of b.s.).
I really think it would have been much better if they had more academics representing their work than corporations (but corp. is where the money is coming from I guess). All I saw was Ohio State's electric dragster, a bit from MIT's Media Lab, and a cool dome VR unit from a university in Montreal. Oh, and a group of students from Japan had a cool poker table.
I don't know about your Corsicant thesis, but I'm pretty sure that R2 is Force attuned, and I'm too lazy to find the link, but Lucas has stated that R2 is the true hero of the series.
If you look at the shots, the suns were, from Luke's point of view, close together (one was smaller to denote that it was quite a bit of distance away from the other), and I would think that the duel shadow would be almost nonexistant because the brighther light source drowned out the shadow caused by the weaker sun--although it did produce some awfully hot days on ol' Tatooine. It's so dry there, you have to farm for moisture!
Yes it did! From what I read, it did have a hyperdrive, but was on the slow end of the sprectrum (although going faster than light can't be considered slow...unless we're talking Ludicrous Speed!) as hyperdrives go in the SW universe. If I remember the first novelation correctly, it took the Death Star a while to get to Yavin but not too long for the Rebels to evacuate. But the added time allowed the Alliance to analyze the Death Star and mount an effective attack.
If you watch Ep. IV, you do get the hint that the Death Star is moving during certain shots, but since it was in space (and due to a limited budget, I bet)there were not many landmarks to measure relative speed.
Real Life, a huge MMRPG, got a great review from Gamespot! Life sounds like a cool MMRPG, we should check it out!!
Actually, the easter egg was in his pants...no wait, he was just glad to see her...
ok, I need to have another drink to get that out of my mind....
would an obvious suggestion to meet women get modded "informative."
Priceless.
Remember, when she's having trouble with her wireless connection...that's when you make your move! (and she doesn't have any problems, you can interfere with her signal...)
(to Karma whore: the laundromat, grocery store, and park are also non-bar places to meet women...thank you! I expect a +5 in ten minutes! ha!)
Even if the Swedish Swim Team comes through, they'll look like a naked Sinead O'Connor.....Gahh!!!
I'm back on the fence on this device!
Maybe when Anakin was redeemed then dies in ROTJ, Yoda and Obi-Wan are doing all the Force work for Anakin...
In one of the books (it might not be considered kosher now), it talks about how a jedi can make an impression on another living jedi right before they die--and since Luke sees Obi-wan, Yoda, and Anakin die, they have a Force impression on him and can appear to Luke at will.
What does this have to do with hacking at all? An introduction to playing MMORPG's has no place in this at all.
Well, hold on for a sec. There's several hacks one could learn about in MMRPG's which are worth writing about:
1st: the macros. Writing a macro can be intimidating to non-tech types (especially, if you've come over from the console genre of gaming). Even though syntax differs from game to game, it's an important thing to a) know about and b) learn if you're going to play well (and boy, does it help with grinding).
2nd: Playing well with others. One thing MMRPG's do well is simulating social networks and this leads to making sure you know the "syntax" of social interaction. In effect, he's talking about a social hack . If you want to tinker with your MMRPG experience, then social hacking is a necessity!
I applaud this authors attempt at expanding the meaning of "hack" to include such things as social hacks.
But the spoiler is explaining HOW (and WHY) those events you described happens! We know WHAT happens and now we will see a lot of the HOW and WHY in ROTS. And Kevin reveals a lot about the HOW (like command 66 or something) and WHY: in my book, that's a spoiler!
Very true! And contrast that with the love story between Han and Leia in Empire...it didn't overtake the story because it was evenly spread over the entire film: with the sexual tension between the two on Hoth, the tension while navigating the astroid field, the kiss while repairing the Falcon (and C3-P0's interuption was BRILLIANT), the kiss on the cheek after escaping the Star Destroyer, the kinda into each other/are we dating? scene in Cloud City (originally, they kissed in that scene--it's where Leia says she doesn't trust Lando, fyi), and of course, the I love you/I know scene. FANTASTIC! Not too much, but it really was a wonderful love story!
Clearly, he wouldn't have panned it: no one who has so much tied into Hollywood's production side would have openly panned it before it came out. BUT, what matters is how effusive he is when writing about it: and Kevin doesn't hold back. I would be MORE concerned if a) Kevin wrote nothing about ROTS after the screening or b) gave it a positive, but not glowing review where we would have been emphasizing what he didn't say about the film. Either scenario would have been more telling!
Exactly: he said he didn't recall owning the droids and did not preclude any other relationship. It was Sir Alec's great acting (his demeanour was very "cagey" when he met Luke) that allows Lucas to exploit this relationship/statement/loophole and have it hold true!
Yes! Someone would be interested in company X's records! A lot of good history is done with business records: look at Cronan's Nature's Metropolis about the history of Chicago. And let me bring it back to the digital world: I talked to Pop Top software while I was working on my thesis about how computer games present history, and they used old records/manifests from railroad companies in the 19th and 20th century to make Railroad Tycoon!
I believe it's called: C6H12O6 A little soft on the bass, but the highs are very sweet!
My Sandisk 1gb flash player was bought at ecost.com and last week they were $129 (I think newegg has it for 145): It has a mic, fm reciever, and display. Its interface is ok, the shuffle function isn't perfect (it numbers the files, and seems the prefer the 1st file), but I'm still happy with it!
Sounds like a George W. Bush "Town Hall Meeting"
Thank you! I'm here 'til Tuesday, try the veal!
Is the motion sensor sensitive enough to navigate/play while it's in your lap, or as I fear, you have to pick it up and tilt it. Even if the laptop is 3 or maybe 4 lbs, after a while, it's going to tire your muscles. However, I do appreciate this hack because it's using something in a way that it wasn't intended to on top of working well (minus muscle fatigue).
Did they have the Sandisk Flash Player? Dave's Ipaq has a good review and I'm happy with mine.
I bought a Sandisk MP3 player so that I can watch TV (if there's something interestingon) while I workout at the gym. Dave's Ipaq had a good breakdown...I believe ecost has the 1 gb version for $120!
It's a quality player, it has a display, works just like a flash drive (although you use a cable to attach it to your comp's usb 2.0 port), and it also has a microphone. It's not as easy to use as an ipod, and it's shuffle feature seems to prefer the first file (it numbers the files) for some reason. But all in all, it's a better buy than the shuffle if you're in my situtation!
talking about your hard upbringing, or busting caps in folks ass?
I think a dude rapping about "soddin' caps in a MoBo while sippin gin-n-bawls" is great schtick!
Instead of rappin' about rollin in his six-fo', he's rappin about "rolling on chrome rams wit a A-six-fo'"
And a hard upbringing? Dude, geekin' ain't e-z...
Keep it real bro...keep it real...
MixMastaKooz out!
they are the only way to verify the electronic count and, as a result, render the electronic count completely redundant.
Thanks for making the point FOR electronic voting w/ paper trail: quicker results but redundancy when needed. good point!
There were a few in the U.S.....
(From the Democratic Socialist website)
As the Socialist Party's standard-bearer twelve years later, [Eugene Debs] won nearly a million votes, some 6 percent of the total. In some states, such as Oklahoma, Washington, and California, the Socialist share of the vote climbed into the double digits. Over the same twelve-year period, the Socialist Party expanded its membership from 10,000 to nearly 120,000. Twelve hundred of these Socialists were elected to public office across the United States, including mayors from Flint, Butte, and Berkeley.
Representative Sanders from Vermont was also a socialist I believe (but this is a modern example and not as valid as socialists elected at the last turn of the century...)
(Especially late 19th and early 20th before 1918, socialist and communist are almost interchangable and not to be confused with Bolsheviks)