Yes, actually your information is definitely out of date and inaccurate. UC Irvine has actually launched, in some capacity, the program you were talking about in collaboration with UC San Diego. Information can be found here.
You state that you will only consider it if and when it performs better than the Phantom. The innuendo is that the Phantom does not exist, performs poorly and is generally a laughable piece of vaporware. You can expect a C&D statement shortly.
I'm pretty sure the parent thread was referring to programs such as Native Instruments' Reaktor used in conjunction with sequencers like Cubase or Logic. In the electronic music scene, where the Powerbook has an iconic presence, software synthesizers like Reaktor are often used and each one you have running in real-time takes lots of processor speed. The more of that speed you have, the more complex synths you can run. I guarantee it doesn't take long to run out of CPU overhead with programs like this.
Similarly, if you are doing any kind of real-time video processing/manipulation, you're gonna want as much CPU power as you can get.
I think the Processing tool/language/environment developed by Casey Reas and Ben Fry at MIT is a great place for young people to learn. Its based on Java syntax, but has a very fast and powerful graphics API that lends itself to quickly creating visual sketches in code. Its completely free, has its own environment and compiler that is simple and easy to get started with. The website has plenty of clearly commented examples teaching concepts step by step, a nice reference page with many illustrations of the core functions and control structures of Processing, and a very helpful message board community. Most people creating in Processing share their source code, so if you see something cool you wanna try out yourself (and there is a lot of reallycoolwork featured on the site), its just a matter of reading through the code.
So if you are a more visually inclined novice programmer like myself, in my experience, playing around in Processing can be immensely insightful and rewarding. And a lot of fun.
Its pretty outrageous that all the condemnations we see of games in the mainstream media are coming out of the mouths of people who haven't played the games themselves. Not only are players not really rewarded for beating women, but there are no distinctions in the game between beating men or women. No distinctions between beating young people or the elderly. Grand Theft Auto is completely equal opportunity in its gratuitous violence.
Joe now seems to have a little more respect for game developers' first ammendment rights, but who the player beats up is really determined by their own free will so his arguement that the game might produce children with no respect for women is pretty dubious. It'd be nice to see some commentators in the media address the deceptive way these games are portrayed by opposition like Lieberman and the Haitian Civil Rights Advocacy groups.
Maybe its becoming more sophisticated in games like Pandora Tomorrow, but as a general game design concept, it's been around for a while.
The concept is mentioned in Rules of Play. Although I don't have it accessible right now, the example they used was in Wipeout XL (but could be any other Wipeout game for that matter). If your racer took a spill in the first lap and the AI of the computer racers didn't change, you'd have no chance at making it back up to the front of the race. However, because Wipeout XL used apadaptive AI, the conputer racers slowed down a little bit in this kind of situation making it possible, although more difficult, for the player to still win the race.
That's not to suggest that this was the first instance of adaptive AI either. Conceptually, I'd wager that its been in games (probably in the sports genre) for quite some time.
Are we all supposed to pretend not to notice the blatant spin Apple is putting on here?
2 years ago when the 5 gig iPod was released, it was advertised to hold 1000 songs (and those of us who like our music encoded higher than 128kbs and/or listen to prog rock were skeptical).
Now, the 4 gig iPod Mini has a 4 gig hard drive and it holds 1000 songs? It only holds 800 of those 5 meg songs we had on our 5 gig iPod 2 years ago!
a new game with Samus and metroid-style gameplay without any metroids in the plot? A new plot with space pirates or something else. The Metroid brand is strong enough to make it without "metroid" in the title. That way both of you are happy. The remakes are getting tired.
It seems that all the driver discussion above has been related to games and linux. Let's not overlook the fact that for years, Nvidia's drivers have worked nearly flawlessly with high-end 3D programs like Alias|Wavefront Maya. Meanwhile, by all indications, ATI's hardware while powerful enough, has remained useless to anyone wanting to use a consumer card for Maya because the of the sketchy drivers.
For this reason, my next video card upgrade will be to an Nvidia card.
the Monkees, manufactured as they were, still managed to be self-effacing to a certain degree. There was even an episode with Frank Zappa as a special guest where the issue of their manufacturedness is brought up and made humorous.
Avril Lavigne made it to where she is singing songs about Sk8r Boiz written by men 20 years her senior. If you get to her stature without writing your own songs, how can you not be manufactured? She's not singing operas or anything!
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, actually your information is definitely out of date and inaccurate. UC Irvine has actually launched, in some capacity, the program you were talking about in collaboration with UC San Diego. Information can be found here.
You state that you will only consider it if and when it performs better than the Phantom. The innuendo is that the Phantom does not exist, performs poorly and is generally a laughable piece of vaporware. You can expect a C&D statement shortly.
-The Infinium Labs Lawyers
I'm pretty sure the parent thread was referring to programs such as Native Instruments' Reaktor used in conjunction with sequencers like Cubase or Logic. In the electronic music scene, where the Powerbook has an iconic presence, software synthesizers like Reaktor are often used and each one you have running in real-time takes lots of processor speed. The more of that speed you have, the more complex synths you can run. I guarantee it doesn't take long to run out of CPU overhead with programs like this.
Similarly, if you are doing any kind of real-time video processing/manipulation, you're gonna want as much CPU power as you can get.
I think the Processing tool/language/environment developed by Casey Reas and Ben Fry at MIT is a great place for young people to learn. Its based on Java syntax, but has a very fast and powerful graphics API that lends itself to quickly creating visual sketches in code. Its completely free, has its own environment and compiler that is simple and easy to get started with. The website has plenty of clearly commented examples teaching concepts step by step, a nice reference page with many illustrations of the core functions and control structures of Processing, and a very helpful message board community. Most people creating in Processing share their source code, so if you see something cool you wanna try out yourself (and there is a lot of really cool work featured on the site), its just a matter of reading through the code.
So if you are a more visually inclined novice programmer like myself, in my experience, playing around in Processing can be immensely insightful and rewarding. And a lot of fun.
Its pretty outrageous that all the condemnations we see of games in the mainstream media are coming out of the mouths of people who haven't played the games themselves. Not only are players not really rewarded for beating women, but there are no distinctions in the game between beating men or women. No distinctions between beating young people or the elderly. Grand Theft Auto is completely equal opportunity in its gratuitous violence.
Joe now seems to have a little more respect for game developers' first ammendment rights, but who the player beats up is really determined by their own free will so his arguement that the game might produce children with no respect for women is pretty dubious. It'd be nice to see some commentators in the media address the deceptive way these games are portrayed by opposition like Lieberman and the Haitian Civil Rights Advocacy groups.
Maybe its becoming more sophisticated in games like Pandora Tomorrow, but as a general game design concept, it's been around for a while.
The concept is mentioned in Rules of Play. Although I don't have it accessible right now, the example they used was in Wipeout XL (but could be any other Wipeout game for that matter). If your racer took a spill in the first lap and the AI of the computer racers didn't change, you'd have no chance at making it back up to the front of the race. However, because Wipeout XL used apadaptive AI, the conputer racers slowed down a little bit in this kind of situation making it possible, although more difficult, for the player to still win the race. That's not to suggest that this was the first instance of adaptive AI either. Conceptually, I'd wager that its been in games (probably in the sports genre) for quite some time.
Are we all supposed to pretend not to notice the blatant spin Apple is putting on here?
2 years ago when the 5 gig iPod was released, it was advertised to hold 1000 songs (and those of us who like our music encoded higher than 128kbs and/or listen to prog rock were skeptical).
Now, the 4 gig iPod Mini has a 4 gig hard drive and it holds 1000 songs? It only holds 800 of those 5 meg songs we had on our 5 gig iPod 2 years ago!
a new game with Samus and metroid-style gameplay without any metroids in the plot? A new plot with space pirates or something else. The Metroid brand is strong enough to make it without "metroid" in the title. That way both of you are happy. The remakes are getting tired.
It seems that all the driver discussion above has been related to games and linux. Let's not overlook the fact that for years, Nvidia's drivers have worked nearly flawlessly with high-end 3D programs like Alias|Wavefront Maya. Meanwhile, by all indications, ATI's hardware while powerful enough, has remained useless to anyone wanting to use a consumer card for Maya because the of the sketchy drivers. For this reason, my next video card upgrade will be to an Nvidia card.
the Monkees, manufactured as they were, still managed to be self-effacing to a certain degree. There was even an episode with Frank Zappa as a special guest where the issue of their manufacturedness is brought up and made humorous. Avril Lavigne made it to where she is singing songs about Sk8r Boiz written by men 20 years her senior. If you get to her stature without writing your own songs, how can you not be manufactured? She's not singing operas or anything!