Yes, that's how primitive* PC trends are destroying good console gaming for some time.
*walking, inherently a 2D thing, in a 3D game? (oh, right, the simplistic control scheme can't handle more, not efficiently) Game mechanics determined by showing off shiny GFX and players falling to it?
Descent 3 is also regarded as FPS game. Yet it doesn't use pointing mechanics (as a matter of fact, there was a clone of it for PS1; DualShock worked beautifully). For another example - there were melee combat FPS games for PC. But it's hard to argue that such game with Wii-like control wouldn't be great (well, assuming the game generally is ok...). Another example are lightgun games - totally different kind of "pointing", also FPS (yes, there are lightgun games which aren't on rails)
GoldenEye is exactly the bad example - it was using mouse mechanics on non-mouse controller. You just don't know any other. But the short list above shows they do exist.
Similarly strategies -, you can have them, there are lots of Japanese ones with long tradition (spanning to SNES times usually). Their devs know for a long time that pointing UI simply won't do. But there is a good working alternative - nested menus.
There's a lot of games that can't be run on DOSbox (well, perhaps on a ridiculously overpowered PC), don't run well on modern OSes and look much better with 3D acceleration (meaning VMs aren't optimal). The only way to sensibly play them is to maintain some old machine...
HL1 is not a typical game. SS2 does have problems on current OSes/GFX drivers.
Consoles...yeah, you must also "maintain" some old one, but if one breaks another is easy to find for the time window I'm talking about.
Luckily there are not only some good console games still being released, but there's also little hassle generally with running older games.
But nice to see that some other people also see roots of the problems (on both consoles and PCs...) in similar way to mine. Unfortunately I almost lost hope for the situation to improve, with so many people simply pointing fingers at "teh evil consoles". It's almost like publishers are playing them, with convenient scapegoat that people swallow, not seeing incompetence and greed of publishing houses.
BTW, DLCs came from PCs - they was called expansions in the past.
You're more specifically talking about PC-style FPS games and strategies, with PC-style game mechanics and UIs - one which revolve around pointing at things.
There are different game mechanics possible...though not used for the most part because of hybridization of gaming market brought mostly by Microsoft - since devtools, code, assets are almost the same it's "sensible" for publishers to create hybrid kind of games, not exploiting the strengths of both platforms.
We have access to some advanced ways of obtaining energy (nuclear reactors, nuclear explosives). And yet we haven't obliterated ourselves.
As a matter of fact, one might imagine expansionist urge as being not only the cause of malevolence and "aggression", but the effect of them - escaping from the risk of destruction by some other group within your civilization.
And you're missing the point that it is also beneficial to "discriminate" against alien civilizations; if your survival matters at all to you (and it's of utmost importance to every lifeform, guided by simple evolution), that is.
Yes, I do agree that cooperation on the global scale is required for any serious space colonization effort. But that's different than being benevolent towards alien cultures.
Well, I didn't really see that restriction per se,...
By the standards of a truly advanced interstellar civilization, we must be quite barbaric indeed. They would be wise to stay away from us, because if they are benevolent, then any interaction with us would likely be to their detriment.
(emphasis mine)...just that you seem to equal being trult advanced interstellar civilization with being benevolent.
And one doesn't mean the other, that's what I was saying (as a matter of fact, from what we see on our planet, being benevolent is exactly the way to never expand, being consumed eventually)
As for the above long comment of yours...even its length and time it took to write makes me feel obliged to respond.
While the ideas you present are certainly attractive, I don't think they work in the real world. We have plenty of examples that they don't really work on Earth, why the rest of the Universe should be significantly different? Contrary to what many people believe, there is most likely no "cosmic force" that guards the order of things. Just laws of physics. Just survival.
You ignore that FTL is most likely impossible in our Universe, and interstellar/intergalactic travel (or even communication) is damn hard - that's the true reason we don't have any visitors, benevolent or malevolent (if they even exist).
Heck, even the distinction you make between benevolence, malevolence and the will to contact might be incorrect - benevolent (according to their morality and values!) species might contact us, try to influence us in a way that they think is correct, but ultimately is harming us (we did such things on Earth). Malevolent species OTOH might just as well prefer to keep their existence a secret, for surprise attack. Attack which hasn't happened because of the vastness of space.
Existing concepts for FTL require such vast amounts of energy that any civilizations who can do it just to visit us, will have technology somehow freeing them from the classical scarceness of resources. And access to it still doesn't mean they would have to be benevolent. We can destroy our civilization, and yet we haven't done so. But you wouldn't argue that we are a "good"...especially in how we treat inferior species
Yes, those are beautiful ideas. But don't expect them. That's the fastest way to find out about malevolence of somebody.
And please, don't present the fairytale of our current states being in opposition to the people. Who do you think gets to positions of power in most cases? Governments are a simply a reflection of society.
You also forget how highly hostile and dangerous is space itself. Again, you just have to look at our world to realize that "kindness" is very strongly inversely correlated to the hostility of environment. We are "civilized" in the West because we can afford to be. In vast areas of the Earth you wouldn't survive long against "malevolent" (one might argue it's simply "survivalist") individuals. They would also outcompete you in space...
And all this while limiting ourselves to strong anthropocentrism. Technological space-faring civilization might so unlike to us that we will interpret any its actions as malevolent (remember that our criteria of morality came from living inside small groups of primates). What if for example they are a hive mind, consuming everything they can, with the perception of the world summed up by "me vs. all that is unknown, bad"?
You can add the same, pleasant kinds of distortions to CD. Heck, you can just properly record the output of vinyl to digital medium and it will sound exactly the same (but it won't degrade)
Why would interstellar civilization be much different?
They could evolve from creatures like us; the "negative" traits of ours that you describe are a byproduct of us being highly expansionist as a species. Highly successful.
Personally I don't equate extremely high, IMHO, chances of life being widespread in the Universe with the chances of it being intelligent.
However...don't forget that we are not the only intelligent specie on Earth. We consider many mammals, birds, even some cephalopods to be intelligent. Not human-level intelligence obviously, and nowhere near technical civilization levels required by current SETI methods...but still intelligent.
Parent poster wasn't really talking about abiogenesis but evolution (perhaps he used too strong words, "complete isolation")
Even if there was some exchange of material at the beginning, any lifeforms that subsequently conquered any of the two planets would be evolving in isolation.
Apart from buying apps together with small companies, mentioned by other posters, perhaps it's an effect of "20% time on personal project" policy at Google?
If large proportion of their apps start that way, they might be stuck with independent decisions of initial dev who treated it like toy project.
Regarding MAKS...apparently you are unable to realize the simple difference between the LEO cargo mass of Delta IV, 8 tonnes, and LEO cargo mass of MAKS orbiter, 8 tonnes. A little hint: Space Shuttle has a little over 20 tonnes cargo capacity to LEO. But the actual mass the Shuttle puts into LEO is much higher. It revolves around a mysterious mathematical concept called...addition.
There's no point answering to rest of your post since you consistently ignore reality; that rocket scientists are seriously considering such stuff.
Yeah, mine phones have those too. Majority of phones do, actually. But they are perceived as quite distinct class of devices from small laptops and almost as "passe", in times of large touchscreen smartphones...
I hope ATMs have more potential to show the validity of the concept for smartbooks. Their screen sizes are similar. And they have many buttons around the screen.
I think the thing it didn't work has more to do with the fact that such terminals were from the time when UI was generally...rough.
Don't forget that this concept is very successful - in ATMs. Also, I quickly checked UI of old Psion palmtops, and they do have something close (though buttons are single-purpose); I do remember they were applauded for their UI.
Chrome OS GUI, whatever it will end up looking like, will be certainly quite "simple". I wouldn't be surprised if you had difficulties finding any menu trees, at least for typical operation.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, that's how primitive* PC trends are destroying good console gaming for some time.
*walking, inherently a 2D thing, in a 3D game? (oh, right, the simplistic control scheme can't handle more, not efficiently) Game mechanics determined by showing off shiny GFX and players falling to it?
(yes, such pointless "argument" can go both ways)
Yes, that's what sets a First Person Shooter is.
No.
Descent 3 is also regarded as FPS game. Yet it doesn't use pointing mechanics (as a matter of fact, there was a clone of it for PS1; DualShock worked beautifully). For another example - there were melee combat FPS games for PC. But it's hard to argue that such game with Wii-like control wouldn't be great (well, assuming the game generally is ok...). Another example are lightgun games - totally different kind of "pointing", also FPS (yes, there are lightgun games which aren't on rails)
GoldenEye is exactly the bad example - it was using mouse mechanics on non-mouse controller. You just don't know any other. But the short list above shows they do exist.
Similarly strategies -, you can have them, there are lots of Japanese ones with long tradition (spanning to SNES times usually). Their devs know for a long time that pointing UI simply won't do. But there is a good working alternative - nested menus.
There's a lot of games that can't be run on DOSbox (well, perhaps on a ridiculously overpowered PC), don't run well on modern OSes and look much better with 3D acceleration (meaning VMs aren't optimal). The only way to sensibly play them is to maintain some old machine...
HL1 is not a typical game. SS2 does have problems on current OSes/GFX drivers.
Consoles...yeah, you must also "maintain" some old one, but if one breaks another is easy to find for the time window I'm talking about.
Luckily there are not only some good console games still being released, but there's also little hassle generally with running older games.
But nice to see that some other people also see roots of the problems (on both consoles and PCs...) in similar way to mine. Unfortunately I almost lost hope for the situation to improve, with so many people simply pointing fingers at "teh evil consoles". It's almost like publishers are playing them, with convenient scapegoat that people swallow, not seeing incompetence and greed of publishing houses.
BTW, DLCs came from PCs - they was called expansions in the past.
Accidentally banning "13375p3ak" is a plus in my book.
I wish...
For some reason many / most(?) of interesting new music bands choose to use Myspace as their homesite.
I'm really torn; great new music (yes, there's plenty of those if you care to look around) versus crappy nature of Myspace.
Hey, there are people who think Daikatana was rather good...
Yes and no...
You're more specifically talking about PC-style FPS games and strategies, with PC-style game mechanics and UIs - one which revolve around pointing at things.
There are different game mechanics possible...though not used for the most part because of hybridization of gaming market brought mostly by Microsoft - since devtools, code, assets are almost the same it's "sensible" for publishers to create hybrid kind of games, not exploiting the strengths of both platforms.
The space bar was programmed to cycle through different progs - like math tables, songs (Daisy Daisy from 2001) etc
Was this meant to scare the shit out of them, ingrain deep rooted fear at early age so they'll never pursue computer-related carrier? Job security?
We have access to some advanced ways of obtaining energy (nuclear reactors, nuclear explosives). And yet we haven't obliterated ourselves.
As a matter of fact, one might imagine expansionist urge as being not only the cause of malevolence and "aggression", but the effect of them - escaping from the risk of destruction by some other group within your civilization.
And you're missing the point that it is also beneficial to "discriminate" against alien civilizations; if your survival matters at all to you (and it's of utmost importance to every lifeform, guided by simple evolution), that is.
Yes, I do agree that cooperation on the global scale is required for any serious space colonization effort. But that's different than being benevolent towards alien cultures.
Well, I didn't really see that restriction per se,...
By the standards of a truly advanced interstellar civilization, we must be quite barbaric indeed. They would be wise to stay away from us, because if they are benevolent, then any interaction with us would likely be to their detriment.
(emphasis mine) ...just that you seem to equal being trult advanced interstellar civilization with being benevolent.
And one doesn't mean the other, that's what I was saying (as a matter of fact, from what we see on our planet, being benevolent is exactly the way to never expand, being consumed eventually)
As for the above long comment of yours...even its length and time it took to write makes me feel obliged to respond.
While the ideas you present are certainly attractive, I don't think they work in the real world. We have plenty of examples that they don't really work on Earth, why the rest of the Universe should be significantly different? Contrary to what many people believe, there is most likely no "cosmic force" that guards the order of things. Just laws of physics. Just survival.
You ignore that FTL is most likely impossible in our Universe, and interstellar/intergalactic travel (or even communication) is damn hard - that's the true reason we don't have any visitors, benevolent or malevolent (if they even exist).
Heck, even the distinction you make between benevolence, malevolence and the will to contact might be incorrect - benevolent (according to their morality and values!) species might contact us, try to influence us in a way that they think is correct, but ultimately is harming us (we did such things on Earth). Malevolent species OTOH might just as well prefer to keep their existence a secret, for surprise attack. Attack which hasn't happened because of the vastness of space.
As a matter of fact, is will to survive really malevolent? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Star )
Existing concepts for FTL require such vast amounts of energy that any civilizations who can do it just to visit us, will have technology somehow freeing them from the classical scarceness of resources. And access to it still doesn't mean they would have to be benevolent. We can destroy our civilization, and yet we haven't done so. But you wouldn't argue that we are a "good"...especially in how we treat inferior species
Yes, those are beautiful ideas. But don't expect them. That's the fastest way to find out about malevolence of somebody.
And please, don't present the fairytale of our current states being in opposition to the people. Who do you think gets to positions of power in most cases? Governments are a simply a reflection of society.
You also forget how highly hostile and dangerous is space itself. Again, you just have to look at our world to realize that "kindness" is very strongly inversely correlated to the hostility of environment. We are "civilized" in the West because we can afford to be. In vast areas of the Earth you wouldn't survive long against "malevolent" (one might argue it's simply "survivalist") individuals. They would also outcompete you in space...
And all this while limiting ourselves to strong anthropocentrism. Technological space-faring civilization might so unlike to us that we will interpret any its actions as malevolent (remember that our criteria of morality came from living inside small groups of primates). What if for example they are a hive mind, consuming everything they can, with the perception of the world summed up by "me vs. all that is unknown, bad"?
You can add the same, pleasant kinds of distortions to CD. Heck, you can just properly record the output of vinyl to digital medium and it will sound exactly the same (but it won't degrade)
I think it has more to do with it being killed just for show, apparently.
Not tame rats.
Actually, they are bred in large numbers for the good of mankind (laboratory animals)
Why would interstellar civilization be much different?
They could evolve from creatures like us; the "negative" traits of ours that you describe are a byproduct of us being highly expansionist as a species. Highly successful.
Personally I don't equate extremely high, IMHO, chances of life being widespread in the Universe with the chances of it being intelligent.
However...don't forget that we are not the only intelligent specie on Earth. We consider many mammals, birds, even some cephalopods to be intelligent. Not human-level intelligence obviously, and nowhere near technical civilization levels required by current SETI methods...but still intelligent.
...though, from what I know about it, it kinda fits with recent "safety first" policy at NASA? :/
No, we can do much more.
With proper telescopes, coming relatively soon, we will be able to determine the atmospheric composition of Earth-like planets.
Finding one with atmosphere similar to Earth is a very strong argument for existence of similar lifeforms.
Though the folks you mention are different in that they don't dismiss it on the grounds of ancient myths.
They explore the possibility.
Parent poster wasn't really talking about abiogenesis but evolution (perhaps he used too strong words, "complete isolation")
Even if there was some exchange of material at the beginning, any lifeforms that subsequently conquered any of the two planets would be evolving in isolation.
Apart from buying apps together with small companies, mentioned by other posters, perhaps it's an effect of "20% time on personal project" policy at Google?
If large proportion of their apps start that way, they might be stuck with independent decisions of initial dev who treated it like toy project.
Regarding MAKS...apparently you are unable to realize the simple difference between the LEO cargo mass of Delta IV, 8 tonnes, and LEO cargo mass of MAKS orbiter, 8 tonnes. A little hint: Space Shuttle has a little over 20 tonnes cargo capacity to LEO. But the actual mass the Shuttle puts into LEO is much higher. It revolves around a mysterious mathematical concept called...addition.
There's no point answering to rest of your post since you consistently ignore reality; that rocket scientists are seriously considering such stuff.
Yeah, mine phones have those too. Majority of phones do, actually. But they are perceived as quite distinct class of devices from small laptops and almost as "passe", in times of large touchscreen smartphones...
I hope ATMs have more potential to show the validity of the concept for smartbooks. Their screen sizes are similar. And they have many buttons around the screen.
They seem to be describing typical, and quite expensive at that (from all the hardware features, battery time, small thickness), laptop.
I don't think they realize what kinds of machines Chrome OS will target.
I think the thing it didn't work has more to do with the fact that such terminals were from the time when UI was generally...rough.
Don't forget that this concept is very successful - in ATMs. Also, I quickly checked UI of old Psion palmtops, and they do have something close (though buttons are single-purpose); I do remember they were applauded for their UI.
Chrome OS GUI, whatever it will end up looking like, will be certainly quite "simple". I wouldn't be surprised if you had difficulties finding any menu trees, at least for typical operation.