Just to show that this successful approach is not limited to FPS and RTS games, I think Civilization (and Colonization) have been quite easy to learn and still a challenge to master. But I don't think this is a problem with the direction the gaming industry is taking, rather with the quality of execution of particular games.
There is no reason why an RPG or a flight simulator should not be easy to learn. But I am appaled when I spend nearly an hour in IL-2 flight simulator and still can't manage to successfully take off. The default keyboard setup was so fucked up that I couldn't learn how to turn left (turning right was a breeze) and couldn't find out how to change the key bindings either. That's not bad strategy, that's bad design.
Watching LOTR for 11 hours straight is cool, but you can't have that much fun every day (unless you have a bad case of anteriorgrade amnesia). When all three movies are released, I want to reedit them to fit LOTR trilogy in a more comfortable 1.5 hours.:-)
That might be a ">funny challenge, to compress the movie 10+ times, keeping the story intact and syncing the soundtrack.:)
Well, there actually are some non-black pixels (1,1,1) and (2,2,2) in this image, but there are too few of them and they are obviously some sort of error (i.e. not faint astronomical objects).
Anyway, I just checked that you can save this image in true-colour PNG (lossless format) and it would still be only 44Kb. This PNG may be not as good as their original image (beamed from space), but it sure is as good as the JPEG on their website.
So, in summary, they might be decent astronomers, but they sure as hell don't know how to save images.
P.S. BTW, a JPEG of that size filled with random noise saves to 8.9Mb at 100% quality. I wonder if they can beat it saving a black rectangle.:)
And if it isn't, then KaZaA and Bonzi Buddy are not spyware either...
I think we should just agree that the right to privacy should prevail over the ability of the companies to enforce compliance with software licences. Yes, it's important that Adobe is compensated for Photoshop, but it is not so important as to permit the software to spy on its users.
An amazing picture. A 1444 x 4266 almost completely black JPEG image takes up more than 400Kb. Did they try lossless JPEG of some sorts? Even when I use 100% quality, the size is only 40Kb. May be that's the reason why we don't have DVD video from Mars yet. Talk about waste of bandwidth...
Yeah. Make it easy to remove them and theives will do it in stores. Make it difficult and everyone will have to broadcast his identity and what he wears everywhere he goes. A difficult choice to make... I, for one, would make it mandatory for the stores to fry the RFIDs on checkout.
This is such an immense usability failure. Earlier Windoze versions, like 9x and ME defaulted to the highest supported refresh. But Windows XP and Windows 2000 default to the lowest supported refresh, which is usually 60Hz, which sucks monkey balls. Apparently, this is some server thingy for extra stability.:) Since users (even advanced users) are clueless, they continue working in 60Hz, which results in eyestrain, headache, impotence and increased suicide rates.
How fucked up a company should be to ship the OS with such a blatant and obvious usability error, I don't know. But Microsoft is fucked up at least that much.
P.S. I am looking forward to 3D mouse cursor and 3D ripple effects for the menus in Longhorn. Viva la innovation! P.P.S. As soon as Windows 2000 is not enough for me, I will be either switching to MacOS or to Linux.
I am referring to two trailers. The original observation of unoriginality was made after E3 (when some movie footage was recorded at the ROTK game presentation) and now confirmed by what was presented as a leaked trailer. I don't think I saw the preview. Do you have a link handy or could you upload it somewhere?
Anyway, I admit that it's too early to judge ROTK, but frankly, I am bored. FOTR was magestic despite a number of flaws, TTT was different (Jacko says it's intentional), but done much worse. "Creative" editing, butchering the book and many other minor flaws seriously spoiled the impression (BTW, check out this). Now I don't really care anymore. Yes, the ROTK could turn out to be a brilliant film, but there is a relatively high chance that it will be even more fucked up then TTT was. These expectations cancel each other out, so this year I will definitely not see LOTR on the opening day. May be after a week or so.
Matrix, on the other hand, didn't disappoint me as much as TTT did. Yes, it's very different from the first Matrix (which, by the way, is just as rewatchable as the FOTR was), but it's still good. And it was original, you can't deny that. Revolutions seem to be (from the available trailers) another different and original movie. It might be slightly better or worse, but I am sure it will still be slick, cool and enjoyable. I am not so sure about ROTK.
An interesting article at Zeropaid.com. But has anyone here actually tried the software? It sounds too good to be true... Any personal experiences would be interesting.
I like to shift the blame as much as anyone else, this is not always a wise decision. The problem with this power plant does not lie with the administrators alone, this is an indicator of another, potentially much more serious systemic problem. There are no procedures in place for implementing digital-capable, Internet-enabled, mobile-connected, AI-enhanced and tomorrow-oriented solutions for safety-critical applications. Such procedures existed for decades for traditional unconnected analogue systems, now they have to be redesigned. Firing an administrator will not eliminate the risk, because: 1) you can't be sure that the next one will be security-conscious 2) even if he is, you can't be sure that the rest of the organisation and every partner organisation are.
New procedures have to be designed. This might happen very soon, but it will definitely happen after a major catastrophe or two that can be traced to the lack of proper security procedures. But don't worry, the chances that this will affect you personally are rather slim.
P.S. As a side-effect, the development of such procedures might raise the security awareness among the general public and provide some useful tools for them (cheap, reliable, idiot-proof and easy to use security solutions with back-up, encryption, firewall, antivirus, permission management, system restore and everything else functions). When setting them up is as simple as installing Bonzi Buddy, users will take proper care of the security.;)
Don't say it's the only, or the best, or even good solution. It is not. There is a fundamental difference in approaches to spam. One approach is to leave technology as it is and use legislation (old or new) to smack the spammers. Another one is to use technological solutions to make spam impossible. But technological solutions will not work, because in case of spam it is trying to undo the technological progress itself. Face it, e-mail is free. It is free because of the technology and unless you shut down the fibre-optic Internet backbones, it will remain free. Any attempt to change it will fail (you may not believe me, but it will regardless of that).
Another technological solution is to remove anonymous e-mail, but this won't work. Even now you can trace the e-mail almost all the time to the originating ISP and IP address. That is still not enough. Take the [relative] anonymity and you will flush the baby with the water. It won't help you fight spam, but we will lose a bit of our rights (right to free speech requires the right to anonymous speech).
The second distinct approach realises the technological changes and attempts to work out the problem from another angle. Make it possible to fight spammers in courts and charge them for the costs they incure. It worked for the faxes, it should work for e-mail. Currently there is no way in most countries to charge spammers with anything. They are not doing anything illegal (technically) and the policies of their ISPs never involve fines, at most a termination of contract. Make a law that anyone can charge a spammer, who must then disclose the list of intended recepients. If the nature of the offending e-mail is not obvious, ask the recepients. If enough of them say it is spam, the spammer is guilty. Give ISPs the authority to try to resolve the issue without going to court first (if both spammer and the recepient agree). You CAN make a law that will both work and not be very easy to abuse. And almost anything will be better than the present situation.
I have an even better idea. Take a robot from Aliens in which Ripley fought the queen, make it somewhat operational (no need to actually walk), so that you can get in it and control it. Place a concave screen in front of you, stereo glasses, good sound system and hydraulics. There is no need to put the player inside a pod, he should be as close to the simulated action as possible.
It's still quite difficult to simulate actual walking experience, although some have come quite close, so may be my idea is a good compromise for the time being.
Am I the only one who was bored to hell with the recent ROTK trailer? To me there was almost nothing original there, the same old shots of the same old characters. More of the same, especially since Jacko decided to make TTT a movie about Helm's Deep battle and saturated us with the cavalry shots or orc shots or battering ram shots.
Compared to that Matrix 3 looks (at least to me personally and from the trailers that I saw) really fresh and new, which is a surprise, since it should have been just another greenish-hued film about the same old trinity (Neo+Trinity+Morpheus).
I don't know what is that Wachowski brothers have that allows them to make original and innovative sequels (yes, Matrix 2 had it's flows and we haven't seen the third installment yet). Good filmmaking skills may be or is that too banal?
Americans (free market guys) will live in poverty caused by greedy corporations. Europeans (safety net guys) will live in luxury provided by their common government. Dunno about Africans, Asians and the rest, depends on the socio-economic developments there in the coming decades.
The choices we make today (or someone else already made yesterday) determine the future.
50 billion is not "a quarter billion $US", unless you use your own definition of a quarter. It's actually more like 423 million $US or 381 million Euro*.
* - Sorry, fucked up Slashcode doesn't support "advanced" non-ASCII characters, like a euro symbol.
May be he was checking something like this and just got carried away. Or didn't check the facts and relied on his memory. Anyway, I don't care. Europe rulez. Even Russia today is more free than the US. Expect the revolution soon.:)
Re:Changed My World
on
Masters of Doom
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
Oh, come on! My university prof knows some guys in id as well, that's why I am currently too busy playing a 10-level Doom3 beta to write a lengthy post.
The movie industry has a problem. I have a solution (original idea by G. Lucas).
1. Install digital projectors in every movie theatre. 2. Upload new movies to all theatres in the world. 3. Start the movie at the same time worldwide. 4. Delete the movie from the theatres the same day, unless it's really successful. Upload the next movie. 5. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. 6. Profit.
Another idea. Implement one of existing technical solutions disabling mobile phones in the theatres. Argue that you do it for the benefit of the public.
In Russia we have the following joke about load mobile phone users:
A guy (say, in St. Petersburg - 600+ km from the capital, Moscow) is speaking extremely loud. Someone asks him: "Why do you need to speak so loud?" He replies: "I am talking with Moscow". "Well, you could have called".
Since all the packages are signed anyway, they should have allowed everyone to distribute the patches in any convenient way. Then you would have the patches on your ISP's server, on your favourite P2P, and literally everywhere, including on CDs in your local computer stores (sold for 5$ or given away), etc.
There are a lot of great games on the Mac. Like Warcraft 3... mmm... that, that puzzle game with the Apple logo. That's a great game! I beat it, but it's still fun.
The confusing thing about PCs is just you go to the store and there's just so many games. And everywhere you look... But on the Mac there's just six. And you know which ones are good, because you already played them all on the PC like five or six years ago. On the Mac I can play plenty of great games that you just can't find on the PC now. Like Zork, Breakout... Super Breakout... Photoshop (in a very low voice).
Another great thing about the Mac is upgrades. On the PC you have to open up the case, swap up your videocard, change jumpers. On the Mac when it's time to upgrade you just pick it up, throw it away and go buy another one. Now, that's convenience.
My name is Gasserola and I am a gamer. Well, I used to be...
1) You don't have to render an image that looks same as GeForce FX pixel-for-pixel. Even on the PC ATI and GeForce produce pictures that look different. In the same venue you don't need the exact same result on XBox. How much like the Windows version should it look like? It depends on how much you want to spend on development. Guess what, all 3D games starting from Doom had dynamic lightning and realistic shadows. How dynamic and how realistic? It varied.;) But I am confident that John Carmack can write a much better looking game for the 486+VGA today than original Doom. You do what you can with the hardware you have. There is always potential for improvement, but it takes time and money to do it.
2) I know a bit about GPU design. The point was that there is no magic property in hardware-rendered pictures that can't be reproduced with software. Unreal (or Unreal Tournament) had software-renderer that looked almost the same as hardware one (but worked slower). Yes, GPU is very good at filling billions of polygons with pixels, but there is no way, why you can't do some functions in code. Especially since modern GPUs (and the one in XBox) support programmable shaders that are intended exactly for that - they execute software.
So, there are three factors that make it possible to recreate Doom3 on inferior hardware: 1) Doom3 is apparently not optimised enough. 2) You can render an image that looks 10% worse on the hardware which is almost twice as slow (by rewriting the heaviest code). 3) It's much easier to render crisp shadows for low-res TV than for 1600x1200 monitor. I've heard that lightning in Doom3 takes an estimated 50% of GPU power. Use simplier and worse-looking algorithms - it will run on XBox and noone will notice.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to show that this successful approach is not limited to FPS and RTS games, I think Civilization (and Colonization) have been quite easy to learn and still a challenge to master. But I don't think this is a problem with the direction the gaming industry is taking, rather with the quality of execution of particular games.
There is no reason why an RPG or a flight simulator should not be easy to learn. But I am appaled when I spend nearly an hour in IL-2 flight simulator and still can't manage to successfully take off. The default keyboard setup was so fucked up that I couldn't learn how to turn left (turning right was a breeze) and couldn't find out how to change the key bindings either. That's not bad strategy, that's bad design.
Watching LOTR for 11 hours straight is cool, but you can't have that much fun every day (unless you have a bad case of anteriorgrade amnesia). When all three movies are released, I want to reedit them to fit LOTR trilogy in a more comfortable 1.5 hours. :-)
:)
That might be a ">funny challenge, to compress the movie 10+ times, keeping the story intact and syncing the soundtrack.
Well, there actually are some non-black pixels (1,1,1) and (2,2,2) in this image, but there are too few of them and they are obviously some sort of error (i.e. not faint astronomical objects).
:)
Anyway, I just checked that you can save this image in true-colour PNG (lossless format) and it would still be only 44Kb. This PNG may be not as good as their original image (beamed from space), but it sure is as good as the JPEG on their website.
So, in summary, they might be decent astronomers, but they sure as hell don't know how to save images.
P.S. BTW, a JPEG of that size filled with random noise saves to 8.9Mb at 100% quality. I wonder if they can beat it saving a black rectangle.
And if it isn't, then KaZaA and Bonzi Buddy are not spyware either...
I think we should just agree that the right to privacy should prevail over the ability of the companies to enforce compliance with software licences. Yes, it's important that Adobe is compensated for Photoshop, but it is not so important as to permit the software to spy on its users.
An amazing picture. A 1444 x 4266 almost completely black JPEG image takes up more than 400Kb. Did they try lossless JPEG of some sorts? Even when I use 100% quality, the size is only 40Kb. May be that's the reason why we don't have DVD video from Mars yet. Talk about waste of bandwidth...
Yeah. Make it easy to remove them and theives will do it in stores. Make it difficult and everyone will have to broadcast his identity and what he wears everywhere he goes. A difficult choice to make... I, for one, would make it mandatory for the stores to fry the RFIDs on checkout.
This is such an immense usability failure. Earlier Windoze versions, like 9x and ME defaulted to the highest supported refresh. But Windows XP and Windows 2000 default to the lowest supported refresh, which is usually 60Hz, which sucks monkey balls. Apparently, this is some server thingy for extra stability. :) Since users (even advanced users) are clueless, they continue working in 60Hz, which results in eyestrain, headache, impotence and increased suicide rates.
How fucked up a company should be to ship the OS with such a blatant and obvious usability error, I don't know. But Microsoft is fucked up at least that much.
P.S. I am looking forward to 3D mouse cursor and 3D ripple effects for the menus in Longhorn. Viva la innovation!
P.P.S. As soon as Windows 2000 is not enough for me, I will be either switching to MacOS or to Linux.
I am referring to two trailers. The original observation of unoriginality was made after E3 (when some movie footage was recorded at the ROTK game presentation) and now confirmed by what was presented as a leaked trailer. I don't think I saw the preview. Do you have a link handy or could you upload it somewhere?
Anyway, I admit that it's too early to judge ROTK, but frankly, I am bored. FOTR was magestic despite a number of flaws, TTT was different (Jacko says it's intentional), but done much worse. "Creative" editing, butchering the book and many other minor flaws seriously spoiled the impression (BTW, check out this). Now I don't really care anymore. Yes, the ROTK could turn out to be a brilliant film, but there is a relatively high chance that it will be even more fucked up then TTT was. These expectations cancel each other out, so this year I will definitely not see LOTR on the opening day. May be after a week or so.
Matrix, on the other hand, didn't disappoint me as much as TTT did. Yes, it's very different from the first Matrix (which, by the way, is just as rewatchable as the FOTR was), but it's still good. And it was original, you can't deny that. Revolutions seem to be (from the available trailers) another different and original movie. It might be slightly better or worse, but I am sure it will still be slick, cool and enjoyable. I am not so sure about ROTK.
An interesting article at Zeropaid.com. But has anyone here actually tried the software? It sounds too good to be true... Any personal experiences would be interesting.
I like to shift the blame as much as anyone else, this is not always a wise decision. The problem with this power plant does not lie with the administrators alone, this is an indicator of another, potentially much more serious systemic problem. There are no procedures in place for implementing digital-capable, Internet-enabled, mobile-connected, AI-enhanced and tomorrow-oriented solutions for safety-critical applications. Such procedures existed for decades for traditional unconnected analogue systems, now they have to be redesigned. Firing an administrator will not eliminate the risk, because:
;)
1) you can't be sure that the next one will be security-conscious
2) even if he is, you can't be sure that the rest of the organisation and every partner organisation are.
New procedures have to be designed. This might happen very soon, but it will definitely happen after a major catastrophe or two that can be traced to the lack of proper security procedures. But don't worry, the chances that this will affect you personally are rather slim.
P.S. As a side-effect, the development of such procedures might raise the security awareness among the general public and provide some useful tools for them (cheap, reliable, idiot-proof and easy to use security solutions with back-up, encryption, firewall, antivirus, permission management, system restore and everything else functions). When setting them up is as simple as installing Bonzi Buddy, users will take proper care of the security.
Don't say it's the only, or the best, or even good solution. It is not. There is a fundamental difference in approaches to spam. One approach is to leave technology as it is and use legislation (old or new) to smack the spammers. Another one is to use technological solutions to make spam impossible. But technological solutions will not work, because in case of spam it is trying to undo the technological progress itself. Face it, e-mail is free. It is free because of the technology and unless you shut down the fibre-optic Internet backbones, it will remain free. Any attempt to change it will fail (you may not believe me, but it will regardless of that).
Another technological solution is to remove anonymous e-mail, but this won't work. Even now you can trace the e-mail almost all the time to the originating ISP and IP address. That is still not enough. Take the [relative] anonymity and you will flush the baby with the water. It won't help you fight spam, but we will lose a bit of our rights (right to free speech requires the right to anonymous speech).
The second distinct approach realises the technological changes and attempts to work out the problem from another angle. Make it possible to fight spammers in courts and charge them for the costs they incure. It worked for the faxes, it should work for e-mail. Currently there is no way in most countries to charge spammers with anything. They are not doing anything illegal (technically) and the policies of their ISPs never involve fines, at most a termination of contract. Make a law that anyone can charge a spammer, who must then disclose the list of intended recepients. If the nature of the offending e-mail is not obvious, ask the recepients. If enough of them say it is spam, the spammer is guilty. Give ISPs the authority to try to resolve the issue without going to court first (if both spammer and the recepient agree). You CAN make a law that will both work and not be very easy to abuse. And almost anything will be better than the present situation.
I have an even better idea. Take a robot from Aliens in which Ripley fought the queen, make it somewhat operational (no need to actually walk), so that you can get in it and control it. Place a concave screen in front of you, stereo glasses, good sound system and hydraulics. There is no need to put the player inside a pod, he should be as close to the simulated action as possible.
It's still quite difficult to simulate actual walking experience, although some have come quite close, so may be my idea is a good compromise for the time being.
Am I the only one who was bored to hell with the recent ROTK trailer? To me there was almost nothing original there, the same old shots of the same old characters. More of the same, especially since Jacko decided to make TTT a movie about Helm's Deep battle and saturated us with the cavalry shots or orc shots or battering ram shots.
Compared to that Matrix 3 looks (at least to me personally and from the trailers that I saw) really fresh and new, which is a surprise, since it should have been just another greenish-hued film about the same old trinity (Neo+Trinity+Morpheus).
I don't know what is that Wachowski brothers have that allows them to make original and innovative sequels (yes, Matrix 2 had it's flows and we haven't seen the third installment yet). Good filmmaking skills may be or is that too banal?
Americans (free market guys) will live in poverty caused by greedy corporations. Europeans (safety net guys) will live in luxury provided by their common government. Dunno about Africans, Asians and the rest, depends on the socio-economic developments there in the coming decades.
The choices we make today (or someone else already made yesterday) determine the future.
50 billion is not "a quarter billion $US", unless you use your own definition of a quarter. It's actually more like 423 million $US or 381 million Euro*.
* - Sorry, fucked up Slashcode doesn't support "advanced" non-ASCII characters, like a euro symbol.
May be he was checking something like this and just got carried away. Or didn't check the facts and relied on his memory. Anyway, I don't care. Europe rulez. Even Russia today is more free than the US. Expect the revolution soon. :)
Oh, come on! My university prof knows some guys in id as well, that's why I am currently too busy playing a 10-level Doom3 beta to write a lengthy post.
The movie industry has a problem. I have a solution (original idea by G. Lucas).
1. Install digital projectors in every movie theatre.
2. Upload new movies to all theatres in the world.
3. Start the movie at the same time worldwide.
4. Delete the movie from the theatres the same day, unless it's really successful. Upload the next movie.
5. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
6. Profit.
Another idea. Implement one of existing technical solutions disabling mobile phones in the theatres. Argue that you do it for the benefit of the public.
In Russia we have the following joke about load mobile phone users:
A guy (say, in St. Petersburg - 600+ km from the capital, Moscow) is speaking extremely loud. Someone asks him: "Why do you need to speak so loud?" He replies: "I am talking with Moscow". "Well, you could have called".
Since all the packages are signed anyway, they should have allowed everyone to distribute the patches in any convenient way. Then you would have the patches on your ISP's server, on your favourite P2P, and literally everywhere, including on CDs in your local computer stores (sold for 5$ or given away), etc.
Surely you are aware that this very thing already happened with the past worms that sent random files as attachments, aren't you?
P.S. There is too much subtlety on Slashdot.
Check out this cool Switch parody by the Red vs. Blue guys.
*** SPOILER BELOW (script) ***
Playing games on the PC was like....
There are a lot of great games on the Mac. Like Warcraft 3... mmm... that, that puzzle game with the Apple logo. That's a great game! I beat it, but it's still fun.
The confusing thing about PCs is just you go to the store and there's just so many games. And everywhere you look... But on the Mac there's just six. And you know which ones are good, because you already played them all on the PC like five or six years ago. On the Mac I can play plenty of great games that you just can't find on the PC now. Like Zork, Breakout... Super Breakout... Photoshop (in a very low voice).
Another great thing about the Mac is upgrades. On the PC you have to open up the case, swap up your videocard, change jumpers. On the Mac when it's time to upgrade you just pick it up, throw it away and go buy another one. Now, that's convenience.
My name is Gasserola and I am a gamer. Well, I used to be...
1) You don't have to render an image that looks same as GeForce FX pixel-for-pixel. Even on the PC ATI and GeForce produce pictures that look different. In the same venue you don't need the exact same result on XBox. How much like the Windows version should it look like? It depends on how much you want to spend on development. Guess what, all 3D games starting from Doom had dynamic lightning and realistic shadows. How dynamic and how realistic? It varied. ;) But I am confident that John Carmack can write a much better looking game for the 486+VGA today than original Doom. You do what you can with the hardware you have. There is always potential for improvement, but it takes time and money to do it.
2) I know a bit about GPU design. The point was that there is no magic property in hardware-rendered pictures that can't be reproduced with software. Unreal (or Unreal Tournament) had software-renderer that looked almost the same as hardware one (but worked slower). Yes, GPU is very good at filling billions of polygons with pixels, but there is no way, why you can't do some functions in code. Especially since modern GPUs (and the one in XBox) support programmable shaders that are intended exactly for that - they execute software.
So, there are three factors that make it possible to recreate Doom3 on inferior hardware:
1) Doom3 is apparently not optimised enough.
2) You can render an image that looks 10% worse on the hardware which is almost twice as slow (by rewriting the heaviest code).
3) It's much easier to render crisp shadows for low-res TV than for 1600x1200 monitor. I've heard that lightning in Doom3 takes an estimated 50% of GPU power. Use simplier and worse-looking algorithms - it will run on XBox and noone will notice.
I say BS.
1) You can do any effect in software.
2) GPU rendering is just as software as the CPU rendering. And you can tweak both.
You could get almost the same statistics by counting patch downloads (there will be patches, right?).