One problem with linearity is a result of Powerpoint 2003 being basically the same as the original product MS acquired in early 1990s (or was it late 1980s).
It would be rather simple (or at least possible) to make projector output different from the screen display. Then it would be possible to turn the computer screen into a control centre for the presentation. Just show a few thumbnails around and you already have an interactive presentation. Make better auto-layout and it should be possible to design the whole presentation in outline mode and have it generate slides on the fly. Enable hyperlinks in outline (not just for clickable objects) and you can easily make different presentation paths controlled from the control centre or by voice.
The screen being a control panel would enable things like lists of illustrations from where you can quickly go to any one of them, usable links to different sections, indices of definitions, external multimedia files (movies, audio), etc., etc.
Of course, that would probably require even more effort than updating nearly 20-year old Notepad, Calc and Paint... So don't really expect anything from MS until powerpoint's market share drops below 75%.
On the other hand, imagine how cool it would be to command the browser directly, bypassing the friend or co-worker. Or to fix problems remotedly over the phone...:) Instead of explaining to someone, where they need to click for an hour or so, you will just say "I'd like to talk to your computer, please."
Your competing theory is, in fact, the same thing. I disagree. Probably I was too vague about it, so here are some examples.
As I said, one of the reasons we don't like computer humans is that they are poorly done. But I didn't mean uncanny valley-style disgust or fear, I meant that when you play some extremely poorly done game, you are just disgusted by the game.:)
But the real argument was that some objects/creatures look scary not because they are too similar to humans, but because they are specifically/accidentally made to look similar to sick/mutated/retarded/dead humans.
I also think that this can apply to robots as well. If at every stage you make teh robot aesthetically pleasing, even though it is still not a complete representation of a human, you will be allright. They key is not to make it ugly (by using bad materials, crappy designer, etc.) when you can avoid it.
Learn the math.:) And financial theory. You can't beat the market. According to one recent qualitative research (don't have a reference handy, sorry) on US data, investors can safely treat the market as 99+% random. And this is 100% supported by the theory. You can't beat the market index, unless you have access to insider information. Everyone who says the opposite is probably trying to sell you some bullshit books on technical analysis or convince you to invest in his fund.:)
A childless person doesn't pass along genes, therefore does not benefit the species. Wrong in several ways. - Evolution is not done to benefit the species or individuals, it is done to benefit the genes (i.e. increase their chances for spreading) - Things other than passing along genes can benefit the species. See ants and bees, for example. Gays might be a human equivalent of a worker bee.:) - To spread your genes you don't have to have kids. Your sister has 50% of your genes, as much as your child will have. Thus caring about your siblings is almost just as good a strategy as having kids.
I suggest you read "The Selfish Gene" by Dawkings, an interesting read.
P.S. The whole gayness question is irrelevant. Chances are we will all stop procreating (due to becoming immortal) in a few decades anyway.
BTW, have you heard about the sequel to KOTOR? According to the Blue's News editorial it will be based in the Episode II timeframe. There is a chance we will see Natalie Portman (petrified, if you have an old video card), covered in hot graphical grits!!!!
Bullshit. This valley thing is popping up again and again, but I'd really like to see an illustration. Not just some made up graphs, but illustrations that would prove the point. And beyond that, I don't see how it would apply to video games. Can you provide an illustration here? Consider the Doom3 marine, nVidia Dawn or Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2. Are they beyond or before the Valley? If they are already beyond, we don't have a problem and I don't remember scary character in between these and Pacman. If they are still before the uncanny valley, let me just say that I have extreme difficulty visualising their scary and frightening descendants.
I just thought up a competing theory.:) I think the reason we don't like some human-like creatures/objects is either because they are poorly done or because they specifically look similar to sick/dead/mad humans. Zombies look scary not because they are too similar to humans, but not really humans. Zombies look scary, first, because they were artificially selected for that, and second, because they look like humans with leprosy, plague, anfrax, syphilis, cancer, encephalitis, etc. at the same time. Some robots look scary because they look like dissected humans with all the mess of wires, or like a human with some skin problem.:)
I can't name a character in a well done 3D game that would look bad because of the uncanny valley. It is always bad design that is causing my aversion.
During the presentation of nVidia FX cards, a demo of a truck was shown. The point, made by the president of nVidia, was that it's easy to make shiny things (a stab at ATi and their racing car demo), but difficult to make realistic ones. Thanks to the shaders, the truck was able to age quite realistically, including paint peeling off, metal parts rusting, chrome dimming, etc.
I would certainly say that the lack of grit is not a huge problem that gaming industry faces today. It's just one of the things a professional designer keeps in mind anyway. When you design a texture, you can call it ready after 2 or 3 iterations, or keep working on it. Every step increases the realism and the designers know that already.
Of course, to some extent the problem can be universally solved via a special grit shader, but it's not like the designers and programmers haven't thought of it already. The problem of any particular game is that it was rushed a bit or that one particular designer didn't pay enough attention to a specific aspect of the game, because he didn't care about it as much as you do, not some huge shortcoming of all modern games.
I HavZoRed a Dr1m zat my 4 KiDz \/\/i1 1 day play on a server where they wi11 n0t b3 judged by the c0l0r of the1r skin bu7 by ze mad skillz 0f theiR char.
I don't think it's a problem. Free market is good at one thing - finding equilibrium. Since 1970s the market for videogames increased, development costs increased too. This allowed developers to keep the price pretty constant at the cost of reducing profit margins. But we have nothing to worry about. There are some factors driving development costs down too, like better modelling, animation, programming and other tools, ready-made game engines, etc. The price for the games is what people are willing to pay for 20-50 hours of entertainment. It's optimal and it's pretty much fixed. But development costs (the investment you make in the beginning) is a variable and you determine it based on the projected market and selected genre.
If this investment will keep rising, it's not because game suddenly became more complex, it's because developers decided to invest more in a more complex game in the hope of selling more copies. It will stop rising precisely when it is no longer profitable to spend more on a game, nothing more, nothing less. But it will not spell out the sudden death of video games or a decline in quality, that's for sure...
Guess what, I'd rather use a pirated version of Photoshop or PhotoImpact and live with the fact that I am not stimulating competition, than part with a few hundred dollars. I happily buy pirated games, simply because I don't care that much about the market. Let the big market players, or small players, or medium-sized players win, I don't care. And I don't care if game players lose. I personally win.
You need to realise that the consumers can be divided into two groups - those who pay for software and those who don't. Those who pay for it, vote with their dollars. Those who don't, have no influence on the result, but they are happy with that. It's the same as with the presidential elections, some people will come to the voting booths and case their vote, others will spend the time the way they want it, but will have no influence on the outcome. You can't blame the second group, because it's their right to make such decision. And if they don't care, it's the correct decision.
I wonder why people consider every valuable idea to be worth +5... Given that the parent comment was pretty obvious and not really 100% true, I would say +3 Interesting is the most it deserves.
Did you bother to RTFA? It appears that Google maims the information on the page in order to create a page summary. Of course, the parser is not intelligent, some sometimes unreleated words will appear in the summary and create libel. The page in question might have contained some neutral info about Mark and some terrible things about person X. Google cut all the text in the middle and it now appeared that Mark did all that terrible stuff. There is nobody else to sue, because nobody else wrote that, only Google server did.
I disclaim any and all responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, completeness, legality, reliability, or operability or availability of information or material displayed in this post. I disclaim any responsibility for the deletion, failure to store, misdelivery, or untimely delivery of any information or material. I disclaim any responsibility for any harm resulting from downloading or accessing any information or material in this post.
Hey, Slashdotters, listen! Tyrdium raped his own mother!
P.S. Sorry for the rude example, but Google can only disclaim half of the responsibility - the responsibility to users, not the responsibility to everyone who is mentioned somewhere on the Google-indexed Internet and every information provider. They consider it their obligation to remove links according to DMCA, they might also be forced by the court to correct obviously misleading page summaries.
Media does need to entertain, but they also need to inform, especially, the more respectable outlets. What irks me most is that BBC is supposed to be above purely entertaining. They are publicly funded, they like to tout themselves as informing the public in return, they pretend to be professional, their slogan (currently?) is "demand a broader view", and yet, that broader view is missing...
I am confident in the ability of medical professionals to learn what is to be learned here. The medical journals are one way to do that. But unfortunately, policy decisions are not always made by professionals, medical or not. And everybody else has a fairly constant amount of clue, i.e. none whatsoever. Oh, well... let's wait for the "8 billion people underwent intelligence amplification treatment" headline, shall we?
If everyone thinks like you, we will never be able to grow babies in tubes. Just think, what parent in their right mind would let a doctor experiment on their healthy child? And with Alessia (and other difficult kids) we have wonderful opportunities to expand our knowledge and improve our skills. Yes, it was probably a costly procedure, but I bet it was a large step for the medicine.
And, of course, we need to consider the possibility of that advanced medicine would eradicate all remains of her medical problems in a few decades. She just has to pull through some hard years and then it will all pay back with improved quality of life and increased life-span, as opposed to dying right now.
What always annoys me in such articles is that the journalists concentrate on the kid and ignore the medical science. Come on, who cares about Alissia? She is only 6 months old - a less than complete human being, and a defective one at that. Why isn't the public told about what medical achievements made it possible, what infrastructure was created in the hospitals in the past decade to make this possible, about the doctors, nurses, their training, education, about computers, about tools, etc., etc.? Why? Certainly all that is much more important than whether yet another human baby will live or die...
Call me heartless, but crap like that BBC article breeds stupidity among general public and teaches them it's ok to ignore how things happen in our world. And hence some of the readers will say the obligatory "wow" (if at all) and go back to opposing stem-cell research, genetics, budget extension for medical schools, and after that will send their kid to some quack or a faith-healing program after consulting with a professionally made horoscope, of course...
In Russia most ISPs, including the largest hosting providers, routinly close websites belonging to spammers (repeat offenders) for a few years already. So far this has not been abused, suggesting, it might work equally well on the American and even global scale too.
Where I live, desktop PCs are pretty much the sum of their parts. Assembly is free and is covered by the markup on components. Just take the price-list, select the parts and the store will put everything together, test and give it to you next day. Of course, you can buy a pre-built box as well.
So with a PC I now exactly what I am paying for. With Macs it is a little bit different, because somewhere in the price sits a huge markup that Apple wants to take from me. While I certainly understand their reasons, I don't think they can justify such a price difference.
Segway was a high-risk high-payoff project. There was a chance that it would revolutionise the human transportation. Well, it didn't. Doesn't mean it couldn't. Check out the latest Toyota robots - one of them have the same 2 wheel base. Actually even before I've heard about the Segway Robotic Platform I though it would be cool if we can have highly mobile robots driving around on two wheels. Wheels absolutely kick ass when you need eXtreme mobility and don't have to worry about terrain/stairs.
So, in conclusion, Segway was a risky bet which didn't pay off, but it doesn't mean it couldn't and it doesn't mean it won't in the foreseeable future.
I don't know whether you are kidding or not, but that would be really handy. Imagine how easy would it be to keep the govt in check if a few thousands American citizens could drive their M1s (with all ammunition loaded) to the White House...
When CD sales go up, it's because file-sharing helps. When CD sales drop, it's because there is not enough file-sharing going on to offset other negative factors. Satisfied?:)
I've only bought 10 casettes in my life (last time around 1990, all of them pirated anyway) and no music CDs/DVDs. I've bought some movies on VHS (mostly pirated) or CDs (all pirated) and I go to movie theatres sometimes (rarely). Other than that, I turn to P2P for all my movie needs. But frankly, I don't care about movie or music industry going down tomorrow.
Slashdot Mirror
If you were really that smart, you would get an MBA. Don't you think everything points in that direction? :)
One problem with linearity is a result of Powerpoint 2003 being basically the same as the original product MS acquired in early 1990s (or was it late 1980s).
It would be rather simple (or at least possible) to make projector output different from the screen display. Then it would be possible to turn the computer screen into a control centre for the presentation. Just show a few thumbnails around and you already have an interactive presentation. Make better auto-layout and it should be possible to design the whole presentation in outline mode and have it generate slides on the fly. Enable hyperlinks in outline (not just for clickable objects) and you can easily make different presentation paths controlled from the control centre or by voice.
The screen being a control panel would enable things like lists of illustrations from where you can quickly go to any one of them, usable links to different sections, indices of definitions, external multimedia files (movies, audio), etc., etc.
Of course, that would probably require even more effort than updating nearly 20-year old Notepad, Calc and Paint... So don't really expect anything from MS until powerpoint's market share drops below 75%.
On the other hand, imagine how cool it would be to command the browser directly, bypassing the friend or co-worker. Or to fix problems remotedly over the phone... :) Instead of explaining to someone, where they need to click for an hour or so, you will just say "I'd like to talk to your computer, please."
Your competing theory is, in fact, the same thing.
:)
I disagree. Probably I was too vague about it, so here are some examples.
As I said, one of the reasons we don't like computer humans is that they are poorly done. But I didn't mean uncanny valley-style disgust or fear, I meant that when you play some extremely poorly done game, you are just disgusted by the game.
But the real argument was that some objects/creatures look scary not because they are too similar to humans, but because they are specifically/accidentally made to look similar to sick/mutated/retarded/dead humans.
I also think that this can apply to robots as well. If at every stage you make teh robot aesthetically pleasing, even though it is still not a complete representation of a human, you will be allright. They key is not to make it ugly (by using bad materials, crappy designer, etc.) when you can avoid it.
Learn the math. :) And financial theory. You can't beat the market. According to one recent qualitative research (don't have a reference handy, sorry) on US data, investors can safely treat the market as 99+% random. And this is 100% supported by the theory. You can't beat the market index, unless you have access to insider information. Everyone who says the opposite is probably trying to sell you some bullshit books on technical analysis or convince you to invest in his fund. :)
A childless person doesn't pass along genes, therefore does not benefit the species. :)
Wrong in several ways.
- Evolution is not done to benefit the species or individuals, it is done to benefit the genes (i.e. increase their chances for spreading)
- Things other than passing along genes can benefit the species. See ants and bees, for example. Gays might be a human equivalent of a worker bee.
- To spread your genes you don't have to have kids. Your sister has 50% of your genes, as much as your child will have. Thus caring about your siblings is almost just as good a strategy as having kids.
I suggest you read "The Selfish Gene" by Dawkings, an interesting read.
P.S. The whole gayness question is irrelevant. Chances are we will all stop procreating (due to becoming immortal) in a few decades anyway.
BTW, have you heard about the sequel to KOTOR? According to the Blue's News editorial it will be based in the Episode II timeframe. There is a chance we will see Natalie Portman (petrified, if you have an old video card), covered in hot graphical grits!!!!
Bullshit. This valley thing is popping up again and again, but I'd really like to see an illustration. Not just some made up graphs, but illustrations that would prove the point. And beyond that, I don't see how it would apply to video games. Can you provide an illustration here? Consider the Doom3 marine, nVidia Dawn or Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2. Are they beyond or before the Valley? If they are already beyond, we don't have a problem and I don't remember scary character in between these and Pacman. If they are still before the uncanny valley, let me just say that I have extreme difficulty visualising their scary and frightening descendants.
:) I think the reason we don't like some human-like creatures/objects is either because they are poorly done or because they specifically look similar to sick/dead/mad humans. Zombies look scary not because they are too similar to humans, but not really humans. Zombies look scary, first, because they were artificially selected for that, and second, because they look like humans with leprosy, plague, anfrax, syphilis, cancer, encephalitis, etc. at the same time. Some robots look scary because they look like dissected humans with all the mess of wires, or like a human with some skin problem. :)
I just thought up a competing theory.
I can't name a character in a well done 3D game that would look bad because of the uncanny valley. It is always bad design that is causing my aversion.
During the presentation of nVidia FX cards, a demo of a truck was shown. The point, made by the president of nVidia, was that it's easy to make shiny things (a stab at ATi and their racing car demo), but difficult to make realistic ones. Thanks to the shaders, the truck was able to age quite realistically, including paint peeling off, metal parts rusting, chrome dimming, etc.
I would certainly say that the lack of grit is not a huge problem that gaming industry faces today. It's just one of the things a professional designer keeps in mind anyway. When you design a texture, you can call it ready after 2 or 3 iterations, or keep working on it. Every step increases the realism and the designers know that already.
Of course, to some extent the problem can be universally solved via a special grit shader, but it's not like the designers and programmers haven't thought of it already. The problem of any particular game is that it was rushed a bit or that one particular designer didn't pay enough attention to a specific aspect of the game, because he didn't care about it as much as you do, not some huge shortcoming of all modern games.
I HavZoRed a Dr1m zat my 4 KiDz \/\/i1 1 day play on a server where they wi11 n0t b3 judged by the c0l0r of the1r skin bu7 by ze mad skillz 0f theiR char.
I don't think it's a problem. Free market is good at one thing - finding equilibrium. Since 1970s the market for videogames increased, development costs increased too. This allowed developers to keep the price pretty constant at the cost of reducing profit margins. But we have nothing to worry about. There are some factors driving development costs down too, like better modelling, animation, programming and other tools, ready-made game engines, etc. The price for the games is what people are willing to pay for 20-50 hours of entertainment. It's optimal and it's pretty much fixed. But development costs (the investment you make in the beginning) is a variable and you determine it based on the projected market and selected genre.
If this investment will keep rising, it's not because game suddenly became more complex, it's because developers decided to invest more in a more complex game in the hope of selling more copies. It will stop rising precisely when it is no longer profitable to spend more on a game, nothing more, nothing less. But it will not spell out the sudden death of video games or a decline in quality, that's for sure...
Guess what, I'd rather use a pirated version of Photoshop or PhotoImpact and live with the fact that I am not stimulating competition, than part with a few hundred dollars. I happily buy pirated games, simply because I don't care that much about the market. Let the big market players, or small players, or medium-sized players win, I don't care. And I don't care if game players lose. I personally win.
You need to realise that the consumers can be divided into two groups - those who pay for software and those who don't. Those who pay for it, vote with their dollars. Those who don't, have no influence on the result, but they are happy with that. It's the same as with the presidential elections, some people will come to the voting booths and case their vote, others will spend the time the way they want it, but will have no influence on the outcome. You can't blame the second group, because it's their right to make such decision. And if they don't care, it's the correct decision.
I wonder why people consider every valuable idea to be worth +5... Given that the parent comment was pretty obvious and not really 100% true, I would say +3 Interesting is the most it deserves.
;)
Mods, please don't overmoderate! Thanks.
Did you bother to RTFA? It appears that Google maims the information on the page in order to create a page summary. Of course, the parser is not intelligent, some sometimes unreleated words will appear in the summary and create libel. The page in question might have contained some neutral info about Mark and some terrible things about person X. Google cut all the text in the middle and it now appeared that Mark did all that terrible stuff. There is nobody else to sue, because nobody else wrote that, only Google server did.
I disclaim any and all responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, completeness, legality, reliability, or operability or availability of information or material displayed in this post. I disclaim any responsibility for the deletion, failure to store, misdelivery, or untimely delivery of any information or material. I disclaim any responsibility for any harm resulting from downloading or accessing any information or material in this post.
Hey, Slashdotters, listen! Tyrdium raped his own mother!
P.S. Sorry for the rude example, but Google can only disclaim half of the responsibility - the responsibility to users, not the responsibility to everyone who is mentioned somewhere on the Google-indexed Internet and every information provider. They consider it their obligation to remove links according to DMCA, they might also be forced by the court to correct obviously misleading page summaries.
Download.Com + Astalavista.Box.Sk
Media does need to entertain, but they also need to inform, especially, the more respectable outlets. What irks me most is that BBC is supposed to be above purely entertaining. They are publicly funded, they like to tout themselves as informing the public in return, they pretend to be professional, their slogan (currently?) is "demand a broader view", and yet, that broader view is missing...
I am confident in the ability of medical professionals to learn what is to be learned here. The medical journals are one way to do that. But unfortunately, policy decisions are not always made by professionals, medical or not. And everybody else has a fairly constant amount of clue, i.e. none whatsoever. Oh, well... let's wait for the "8 billion people underwent intelligence amplification treatment" headline, shall we?
If everyone thinks like you, we will never be able to grow babies in tubes. Just think, what parent in their right mind would let a doctor experiment on their healthy child? And with Alessia (and other difficult kids) we have wonderful opportunities to expand our knowledge and improve our skills. Yes, it was probably a costly procedure, but I bet
it was a large step for the medicine.
And, of course, we need to consider the possibility of
that advanced medicine would eradicate all remains of her medical problems in a few decades. She just has to pull through some hard years and then it will all pay back with improved quality of life and increased life-span, as opposed to dying right now.
What always annoys me in such articles is that the journalists concentrate on the kid and ignore the medical science. Come on, who cares about Alissia? She is only 6 months old - a less than complete human being, and a defective one at that. Why isn't the public told about what medical achievements made it possible, what infrastructure was created in the hospitals in the past decade to make this possible, about the doctors, nurses, their training, education, about computers, about tools, etc., etc.? Why? Certainly all that is much more important than whether yet another human baby will live or die...
Call me heartless, but crap like that BBC article breeds stupidity among general public and teaches them it's ok to ignore how things happen in our world. And hence some of the readers will say the obligatory "wow" (if at all) and go back to opposing stem-cell research, genetics, budget extension for medical schools, and after that will send their kid to some quack or a faith-healing program after consulting with a professionally made horoscope, of course...
In Russia most ISPs, including the largest hosting providers, routinly close websites belonging to spammers (repeat offenders) for a few years already. So far this has not been abused, suggesting, it might work equally well on the American and even global scale too.
Where I live, desktop PCs are pretty much the sum of their parts. Assembly is free and is covered by the markup on components. Just take the price-list, select the parts and the store will put everything together, test and give it to you next day. Of course, you can buy a pre-built box as well.
So with a PC I now exactly what I am paying for. With Macs it is a little bit different, because somewhere in the price sits a huge markup that Apple wants to take from me. While I certainly understand their reasons, I don't think they can justify such a price difference.
Segway was a high-risk high-payoff project. There was a chance that it would revolutionise the human transportation. Well, it didn't. Doesn't mean it couldn't. Check out the latest Toyota robots - one of them have the same 2 wheel base. Actually even before I've heard about the Segway Robotic Platform I though it would be cool if we can have highly mobile robots driving around on two wheels. Wheels absolutely kick ass when you need eXtreme mobility and don't have to worry about terrain/stairs.
So, in conclusion, Segway was a risky bet which didn't pay off, but it doesn't mean it couldn't and it doesn't mean it won't in the foreseeable future.
I don't know whether you are kidding or not, but that would be really handy. Imagine how easy would it be to keep the govt in check if a few thousands American citizens could drive their M1s (with all ammunition loaded) to the White House...
Apparently some do. RIAA and MPAA spring to mind...
When CD sales go up, it's because file-sharing helps. When CD sales drop, it's because there is not enough file-sharing going on to offset other negative factors. Satisfied? :)
I've only bought 10 casettes in my life (last time around 1990, all of them pirated anyway) and no music CDs/DVDs. I've bought some movies on VHS (mostly pirated) or CDs (all pirated) and I go to movie theatres sometimes (rarely). Other than that, I turn to P2P for all my movie needs. But frankly, I don't care about movie or music industry going down tomorrow.