Please excuse me if I sound rude, but are you being serious? I don't know why I feel the need to reply to you about this - but the fact is I just happen to like this game. And mind you, I've only been playing it for a couple days, the allure could still wear off.
Perhaps next time in order to assuage your paranioa that I am some marketing drone or something I will include things such as, "after feeling that the original sims was too old and reading largely negative reviews about the sims online, I decided to pick up the more highly reviewed sims 2".
It's a fact that the sims 2 has recieved very good ratings from most game review sites - and this is what directed my decision on what will wright design to try out.
I don't make a habit of responding to accusory posts such as yours, but I can see how you can construe my post as being dishonest (I also have a bit of paranoia of my own that you may just be using a subtly flamey technique to get a rise). The fact is that I like what I've seen of Spore, I am excited about it, I have only recently learned about all of Will Wright's projects, I have just recently begun playing the sims, I did so to test out Will Wright's design ideas and the way the game made me feel seemed a relevant topic for this thread.
We humans are such bonding creatures aren't we? I actually realized this just last evening when I was playing the sims 2.
I had never played a sims game before, but all the excitement and buzz around spore made me decide to try out some of will wrights designs - so I picked up the highly reviewed sims 2.
I created a family and was amazed at how quickly I became attached to them. I feel so compelled to make sure that they are well fed and happy - and I have become extrememly preoccupied with making certain they all have positive relationships with each other.
Then I suddenly realized that these sims are programmed to age and eventually die! I then started another family which I care much less about and refuse to load my original family because I can't bear the thought not only of their permanent passing - but of the distress it will cause the other sims!
Someday I will take them out of this suspended "animation" when I discover how to make them live indefinitely - either through game methods or life-saving game modding!
You know, I'm starting to think that broadcast television, motion pictures and recorded music might not be worth all this trouble.
Perhaps it's time to start enjoying live plays and musical performances again. Seriously, my digital entertainment is video games and documentaries. I am starting to think the unthinkable: maybe I can live without TV and Movies.
People will continue to create entertainment and education for download right? Oh, right...Unless network neutrality is abolished and my provider decides that I can't access this freely created content.
I wonder, is it time that I start figuring out how to set up a HAM-based Internet connection?
carefully crafted to amuse the people playing them
While this is no doubt true I don't think basketball or baseball were originally crafted to entertain millions of spectators.
It's interesting for people to watch these sports because they have become a part of culture and because the majority of spectators tend to play these same games.
Modern games are starting to look less like games and more like movies in many respects.
go to your local arcade and watch over somebody's shoulder for a half hour
Arcade???? I don't even remember the last time I went to an arcade.
Here is a video of the 20id clan in match play (fast forward to somewhere in the middle). This won't be as interesting to watch if you've never played bf2 - but this game plays very well with teamwork, and you can clearly see the squad tactics in play. I watched the whole thing. I found it very interesting and would happily watch this if televised.
I think part of the intrigue is that it looks very realistic at times. And this is not a "jump-50-feet-in-the-air", "fire-lasers-and-plasma-at-each-other" game (which have thier own following). If you try to play battlefield like quake you will die quickly. You need to take cover and provide suppresive fire.
Watching this is not the same as watching someone play Altered Beast or Street Fighter at your local arcade. Eventually games will look like war footage or a war movie - and that draws ratings.
Take a look at this. There's still plenty of human birthing to take place - it's just the world as we know it which will end Friday, November 13, 2026. And good riddance says I!
well, good riddance to some of it. I like the majority of how the world is right now - there's just a couple little problems like war, famine and the like that I would like to strike off the issue board.
It seems that the large, flat expanses of Africa are more conducive to the evolution of bipedal locomotion; which is the most effecient form of leg-based movement for endurance and traversing long distances (bepedalism is essentially a pendulum).
Asia does have it's fair share of flat expanses of course, but the amazing flora and fauna of Africa, the diversity thereof and climate change data still seems to point to an evolutionary hotspot on the globe.
Nevertheless, let's not fall into the mindset where alternative theories are tossed aside simply because they don't "feel" right.
Meteor crater in Arizona was once thought to have been caused by lava and steam - but now we know it was created by an intelligent designer;)
It's interesting to me how the worlds of physical and logical play out.
Take for instance the PS3 and the Xbox360. These machines are powerful and expensive - but they will be sold at a loss in order to increase sales of the games (software). So it seems to me that the trend for their pricing is downward for the hardware - pay only for the software; this is strange to me.
Now with Mac they want to lock-in what hardware you can install their software onto - because they want to NOT sell their hardware at a loss.
I've always though that hardware should be what you actually pay for, and that hardware manufacturers should buy "certifications" for various softwares. This way the consumer would pay the hardware manufacturers and then the hardware manufacturers would pay the software engineers.
Would this create greater disparity and more hetrogeny? I think it would do the opposite, as hardware manufacturers now have to worry about a popular piece of software running on their hardware, instead of the other way around (as it largely seems currently).
Just wild conjecture on my part: please, tear down my ideas. Only fools wish to have their views and ideas go unchallenged.
Well, that or they should put the homeless in the space station at least. I mean, with all this research how has nobody thought of testing the effects of zero g on the homeless?
With the perterbations in American science as of late, learning Korean, French, German, Spanish, Japanese or Austrailian all seem like good ideas for United Statians anyhow!
...ok, in order to appease the pro-American science folks (of whom I am one), and lower the flamable temperature of my post, the United States continues to create breakthroughs - it's just the barriers through which to break seem less and less scientific as of late.
with russia involved with the rest of europe, now what's keeping them from researching a nuclearrocket?
It just seems like a great use of nuclear ability. I mean, space, nuclear reactions, the two just go so well together, like peanut butter and...and whatever else goes really well with peanut butter.
Is it still just public opinion about nuclear power? Because that's dumb.
Do you think bacteria could evolve to disguise or alter their "smell" to avoid extermination?
I read recently that there are bacteria that have evolved to consume nylon. We know they evolved recently because nylon is manufactured and does not appear in nature.
It's apparently a pretty crappy food though. I'm not suprised.
I wonder if that would mean you could engineer deodorant bacteria to selectively mask the detectability of certain other chemicals?
Very good points. I appologize about the microscope slighting, I have owned equal numbers of microscopes and telescopes throughout my life. After all, one could not make the hubble's mirror so smooth without microscope-driven reasearch and progress.
It's refreshing to hear an equivocal voice such as yours supplanting itself into this emotionally-charged discussion. It only serves to make me feel even more foolish about my illogical zeal. But I am not ashamed. I look forward and upwards always, and I know at times this means looking back and deeply. Really, mine was a post of frustration.
I don't see why, if someone thinks something is possible someday, they can think this means it is impossible today. I like to think about how the materials our computers are made from have always been sitting in the earth for centuries - basically in the exact spot from which they were mined. It's fun to know that if we sent back in time, say to the middle-ages, a few hundred scientists that they would, within thier lifetimes, recreate a plethora of modern technologies.
this is to say that the day and age and timeframe do not make sciences a reality, merely the knowledge which has been uncovered, discovered.
the more people who are looking for the needle, the less hay per person. This is how I think of problems in science.
At any rate, thank you for jumping-in to represent the scientific community in a realistic manner. It always bothers me when someone says, "be more realistic". Whenever someone says that, it is always in a negative context. I don't see reality as inherently negative. Of course, reality isn't inherently positive either. Reality, it seems to me, is equal.
You, sir, seem to me to be very realistic. And that gives me great hope.
Also, I think the best way to get into space (within a decade or two) is a nuclear rocket! Just love the idea of hefting an office-building into space and then "gently" returning it by descending vertically like the lunar lander.
Can't wait to have my mind blown by the new reasearch! I'm going to news.google and scholar.google some nanotube stuff right now!
hmm, my post was flamebait wasn't it?..I was in a pissy mood I guess. I'm sorry.
IANAP - But I play one on the internet.
So, How could you use an analogy based on two examples of terrestrial, wheel-based transportation techniques followed by a sudden jump to a completely different line of technology based on different propulsion along with a whole host of other unrelated technological hurdles (all of which have been things folks were working on long before the invention of the automobile, I might add) and seriously think it means anything at all?
I don't think it was a meaningless example. True, it wasn't as linear an analogy as our Physicist parent's, but my point was to illustrate how human progress is no longer linear (if it ever even was). I think there is validity in my analogy - these are all ways of getting someone or something somewhere with increasing capability: forms of conveyance.
What chart? All you've formulated is a large pile of non-cohesive anecdote that doesn't really argue anything.
There are countless indicators of humanity's unprecedented recent progress. I should have made up some simple, snappy function to graph using the indicators I highlighted, but honestly that would be easily countered (as often are statistics). I thought I would step-back, and just try to look at the current state of technology as a whole as compared to the past. The light bulb is the fire and the nuclear energy is the firewood. I think they are comparable, at least superficially.
The microscope thing was dumb. I admit. I was just getting worked up, and this is the emotional outburst. I love microscopy, I put the electron microscope and the hubble on the same level matter of fact. And I love all physicists and scientists, even the pessimistic ones (it's just so fun when they are finally wrong about something!)
you see, my frustration stems from naysayers. It's so easy to nay, yes? I mean, most ideas and experiments fail in some way. Look how long we've worked on flight. How many people have said, "that will never work" and were right? Many, most in fact. But we flew. It just took the internal combustion engine to make it a reality. In fact, it took only decades after that engine before Kitty Hawk.
Nowadays I think of the computer as the new engine, and I really don't see why we it's so inconcievable that we could have the elevator within a half-century. Sure, betting against it seems safe, but do you bet to be safe? or do you bet for the maximum payoff?
how could you use an analogy like "it took millenia to get from iron->steel->a few dm steel wire for bridges" when it took millenia to get from horse and carriage to the car...but then only a half-century to get into space?
seriously, what's the average velocity of a horse and carriage vs. the average speed of an orbiting body?
now juxtapose that over that timeline...
and what about energy? we had fire to heat us for millenia. then within decades of the light-bulb we have nuclear reactors.
please formulate a similar chart to the aforementioned.
your the kind of physicist who looks through microscopes not telescopes, aren't you?
I would change the first of your two hyperbolics from "TONS of" to "much".
I do, however, agree with your second uppercase word.
NASA got to the moon in 10 years, developed tons of technology doing so. How could you honestly think that additional (read: TONS more) resources dedicated to this research would not increase the rate and improve the quality of the results?
god, responding to ACs feels like arguing with yourself.
The launch loop still requires classic reentry for space vehicles.
This is still a fantastic idea for getting things up, though.
It's just getting back down that runs into the same old problems (and comming down from space gently is one of the best (most overlooked) features of a space elevator).
Slashdot Mirror
Please excuse me if I sound rude, but are you being serious? I don't know why I feel the need to reply to you about this - but the fact is I just happen to like this game. And mind you, I've only been playing it for a couple days, the allure could still wear off.
Perhaps next time in order to assuage your paranioa that I am some marketing drone or something I will include things such as, "after feeling that the original sims was too old and reading largely negative reviews about the sims online, I decided to pick up the more highly reviewed sims 2".
It's a fact that the sims 2 has recieved very good ratings from most game review sites - and this is what directed my decision on what will wright design to try out.
I don't make a habit of responding to accusory posts such as yours, but I can see how you can construe my post as being dishonest (I also have a bit of paranoia of my own that you may just be using a subtly flamey technique to get a rise). The fact is that I like what I've seen of Spore, I am excited about it, I have only recently learned about all of Will Wright's projects, I have just recently begun playing the sims, I did so to test out Will Wright's design ideas and the way the game made me feel seemed a relevant topic for this thread.
We humans are such bonding creatures aren't we? I actually realized this just last evening when I was playing the sims 2.
I had never played a sims game before, but all the excitement and buzz around spore made me decide to try out some of will wrights designs - so I picked up the highly reviewed sims 2.
I created a family and was amazed at how quickly I became attached to them. I feel so compelled to make sure that they are well fed and happy - and I have become extrememly preoccupied with making certain they all have positive relationships with each other.
Then I suddenly realized that these sims are programmed to age and eventually die! I then started another family which I care much less about and refuse to load my original family because I can't bear the thought not only of their permanent passing - but of the distress it will cause the other sims!
Someday I will take them out of this suspended "animation" when I discover how to make them live indefinitely - either through game methods or life-saving game modding!
You know, I'm starting to think that broadcast television, motion pictures and recorded music might not be worth all this trouble.
Perhaps it's time to start enjoying live plays and musical performances again. Seriously, my digital entertainment is video games and documentaries. I am starting to think the unthinkable: maybe I can live without TV and Movies.
People will continue to create entertainment and education for download right? Oh, right...Unless network neutrality is abolished and my provider decides that I can't access this freely created content.
I wonder, is it time that I start figuring out how to set up a HAM-based Internet connection?
in li.eu of this sunrise period you speak of, would sex.eu be spoken for already by some entity?
I ask, because there will no doubt be a huge rush at that domain.
I wonder, how would one even get that domain registered? Will someone with "connections" have the better chance?
carefully crafted to amuse the people playing them
While this is no doubt true I don't think basketball or baseball were originally crafted to entertain millions of spectators.
It's interesting for people to watch these sports because they have become a part of culture and because the majority of spectators tend to play these same games.
Modern games are starting to look less like games and more like movies in many respects.
go to your local arcade and watch over somebody's shoulder for a half hour
Arcade???? I don't even remember the last time I went to an arcade.
Here is a video of the 20id clan in match play (fast forward to somewhere in the middle). This won't be as interesting to watch if you've never played bf2 - but this game plays very well with teamwork, and you can clearly see the squad tactics in play. I watched the whole thing. I found it very interesting and would happily watch this if televised.
I think part of the intrigue is that it looks very realistic at times. And this is not a "jump-50-feet-in-the-air", "fire-lasers-and-plasma-at-each-other" game (which have thier own following). If you try to play battlefield like quake you will die quickly. You need to take cover and provide suppresive fire.
Watching this is not the same as watching someone play Altered Beast or Street Fighter at your local arcade. Eventually games will look like war footage or a war movie - and that draws ratings.
Honestly, it sounds and reads like boing boing is just reporting the facts. Nothing more.
Software is written that destabilizes a system, causes a crash and could potentially damage hardware.
What am I missing?
Also good.
Don't worry, "doomsday" is actually just another word for the technological singularity.
Take a look at this. There's still plenty of human birthing to take place - it's just the world as we know it which will end Friday, November 13, 2026. And good riddance says I!
well, good riddance to some of it. I like the majority of how the world is right now - there's just a couple little problems like war, famine and the like that I would like to strike off the issue board.
The "Eve" theory is evidenced by mitochondrial DNA.
We are all related to some nice lady from about 150,000 years ago. that's EVERYONE, mind you.
DNA doesn't lie. Modern homosapiens are all from the same place.
It seems that the large, flat expanses of Africa are more conducive to the evolution of bipedal locomotion; which is the most effecient form of leg-based movement for endurance and traversing long distances (bepedalism is essentially a pendulum).
;)
Asia does have it's fair share of flat expanses of course, but the amazing flora and fauna of Africa, the diversity thereof and climate change data still seems to point to an evolutionary hotspot on the globe.
Nevertheless, let's not fall into the mindset where alternative theories are tossed aside simply because they don't "feel" right.
Meteor crater in Arizona was once thought to have been caused by lava and steam - but now we know it was created by an intelligent designer
oh I kid, I kid!
It's interesting to me how the worlds of physical and logical play out.
Take for instance the PS3 and the Xbox360. These machines are powerful and expensive - but they will be sold at a loss in order to increase sales of the games (software). So it seems to me that the trend for their pricing is downward for the hardware - pay only for the software; this is strange to me.
Now with Mac they want to lock-in what hardware you can install their software onto - because they want to NOT sell their hardware at a loss.
I've always though that hardware should be what you actually pay for, and that hardware manufacturers should buy "certifications" for various softwares. This way the consumer would pay the hardware manufacturers and then the hardware manufacturers would pay the software engineers.
Would this create greater disparity and more hetrogeny? I think it would do the opposite, as hardware manufacturers now have to worry about a popular piece of software running on their hardware, instead of the other way around (as it largely seems currently).
Just wild conjecture on my part: please, tear down my ideas. Only fools wish to have their views and ideas go unchallenged.
yes, that money should go to the homeless!
Well, that or they should put the homeless in the space station at least. I mean, with all this research how has nobody thought of testing the effects of zero g on the homeless?
Don't worry, I hear it's easier than English!
With the perterbations in American science as of late, learning Korean, French, German, Spanish, Japanese or Austrailian all seem like good ideas for United Statians anyhow!
...ok, in order to appease the pro-American science folks (of whom I am one), and lower the flamable temperature of my post, the United States continues to create breakthroughs - it's just the barriers through which to break seem less and less scientific as of late.
AH! yes!...hmm, now I'm hungry.
with russia involved with the rest of europe, now what's keeping them from researching a nuclear rocket?
It just seems like a great use of nuclear ability. I mean, space, nuclear reactions, the two just go so well together, like peanut butter and...and whatever else goes really well with peanut butter.
Is it still just public opinion about nuclear power? Because that's dumb.
Do you think bacteria could evolve to disguise or alter their "smell" to avoid extermination?
I read recently that there are bacteria that have evolved to consume nylon. We know they evolved recently because nylon is manufactured and does not appear in nature.
It's apparently a pretty crappy food though. I'm not suprised.
I wonder if that would mean you could engineer deodorant bacteria to selectively mask the detectability of certain other chemicals?
I'm thinking that next comes GoogleGoogle, which lets you search google like never before!
Very good points. I appologize about the microscope slighting, I have owned equal numbers of microscopes and telescopes throughout my life. After all, one could not make the hubble's mirror so smooth without microscope-driven reasearch and progress.
It's refreshing to hear an equivocal voice such as yours supplanting itself into this emotionally-charged discussion. It only serves to make me feel even more foolish about my illogical zeal. But I am not ashamed. I look forward and upwards always, and I know at times this means looking back and deeply. Really, mine was a post of frustration.
I don't see why, if someone thinks something is possible someday, they can think this means it is impossible today. I like to think about how the materials our computers are made from have always been sitting in the earth for centuries - basically in the exact spot from which they were mined. It's fun to know that if we sent back in time, say to the middle-ages, a few hundred scientists that they would, within thier lifetimes, recreate a plethora of modern technologies.
this is to say that the day and age and timeframe do not make sciences a reality, merely the knowledge which has been uncovered, discovered.
the more people who are looking for the needle, the less hay per person. This is how I think of problems in science.
At any rate, thank you for jumping-in to represent the scientific community in a realistic manner. It always bothers me when someone says, "be more realistic". Whenever someone says that, it is always in a negative context. I don't see reality as inherently negative. Of course, reality isn't inherently positive either. Reality, it seems to me, is equal.
You, sir, seem to me to be very realistic. And that gives me great hope.
Also, I think the best way to get into space (within a decade or two) is a nuclear rocket! Just love the idea of hefting an office-building into space and then "gently" returning it by descending vertically like the lunar lander.
Can't wait to have my mind blown by the new reasearch! I'm going to news.google and scholar.google some nanotube stuff right now!
hmm, my post was flamebait wasn't it?..I was in a pissy mood I guess. I'm sorry.
IANAP - But I play one on the internet.
So, How could you use an analogy based on two examples of terrestrial, wheel-based transportation techniques followed by a sudden jump to a completely different line of technology based on different propulsion along with a whole host of other unrelated technological hurdles (all of which have been things folks were working on long before the invention of the automobile, I might add) and seriously think it means anything at all?
I don't think it was a meaningless example. True, it wasn't as linear an analogy as our Physicist parent's, but my point was to illustrate how human progress is no longer linear (if it ever even was). I think there is validity in my analogy - these are all ways of getting someone or something somewhere with increasing capability: forms of conveyance.
What chart? All you've formulated is a large pile of non-cohesive anecdote that doesn't really argue anything.
There are countless indicators of humanity's unprecedented recent progress. I should have made up some simple, snappy function to graph using the indicators I highlighted, but honestly that would be easily countered (as often are statistics). I thought I would step-back, and just try to look at the current state of technology as a whole as compared to the past. The light bulb is the fire and the nuclear energy is the firewood. I think they are comparable, at least superficially.
The microscope thing was dumb. I admit. I was just getting worked up, and this is the emotional outburst. I love microscopy, I put the electron microscope and the hubble on the same level matter of fact. And I love all physicists and scientists, even the pessimistic ones (it's just so fun when they are finally wrong about something!)
you see, my frustration stems from naysayers. It's so easy to nay, yes? I mean, most ideas and experiments fail in some way. Look how long we've worked on flight. How many people have said, "that will never work" and were right? Many, most in fact. But we flew. It just took the internal combustion engine to make it a reality. In fact, it took only decades after that engine before Kitty Hawk.
Nowadays I think of the computer as the new engine, and I really don't see why we it's so inconcievable that we could have the elevator within a half-century. Sure, betting against it seems safe, but do you bet to be safe? or do you bet for the maximum payoff?
What's wrong with dreaming?
you're a physicist?
how could you use an analogy like "it took millenia to get from iron->steel->a few dm steel wire for bridges" when it took millenia to get from horse and carriage to the car...but then only a half-century to get into space?
seriously, what's the average velocity of a horse and carriage vs. the average speed of an orbiting body?
now juxtapose that over that timeline...
and what about energy? we had fire to heat us for millenia. then within decades of the light-bulb we have nuclear reactors.
please formulate a similar chart to the aforementioned.
your the kind of physicist who looks through microscopes not telescopes, aren't you?
It took 28 years from E=MC^2 to the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
Nanotubes were realized in 1991. Why couldn't the technology be mature enough to build an elevator in around 15-20 years?
I would change the first of your two hyperbolics from "TONS of" to "much".
I do, however, agree with your second uppercase word.
NASA got to the moon in 10 years, developed tons of technology doing so. How could you honestly think that additional (read: TONS more) resources dedicated to this research would not increase the rate and improve the quality of the results?
god, responding to ACs feels like arguing with yourself.
The launch loop still requires classic reentry for space vehicles.
This is still a fantastic idea for getting things up, though.
It's just getting back down that runs into the same old problems (and comming down from space gently is one of the best (most overlooked) features of a space elevator).
Its nicer to repel than base-jump.
Perhaps if more research was being done into their manufacture we would already have them elsewhere.
But instead time and money is spent on revamping the Apollo capsule (nevertheless, a good revamp to be fair).