What's to insure the trust within this project? Call me a cynic, but what's preventing some jerk from swapping some bytes in his set of data before sending it off, thus, rendering your combined result different from what you intended?
For the most part, titles that go from game to movie or movie to game have been terrible (Super Mario Bros., Enter the Matrix, Street Fighter 2, etc.) However, I can only see the growing interest of Hollywood into games as a good thing. Sure, it's been bad in the past, but that's mostly due to the fact that one side is only interested in capitalizing off the title to get some extra bucks (like LOTR or the Matrix). There wasn't a serious amount of forethought put into it (at least it seems to me) but more of a "Hey, this is a successful franchise, let's build a game/movie out of it" (game/movie depending on which direction) "so that we can get more money."
With this increased input and interaction from movie makers, games stand a good chance to do better where they've generally failed: story. And sometimes, games need a little push in the cinematic direction too. How many times have you seen a cutscene that made you puke or a default camera angle that was unusable? Or how about the terrible voice acting that seems to be a hallmark of so many games? And boy oh boy, story... imagine if a lot of games got a good push in that direction. Sure, there are been some games with interesting/excellent stories in the past (HL, Deus Ex, LucasArts adventure games, and others come to mind), but the majority of games do not have a good story - almost all FPS, most RTS, some MMORPG, most platformers, and the list goes on. Maybe finally, it will be the norm for games to have intriguiging story lines with good dialogue.
Well, it could have been a command, making it not a fragment. I was just trying to be funny anyways, but apparently the mods didn't think so. It'd odd, every time I attempt humor on slashdot, I usually fail.
I do agree that all too often applications are rammed into PHP without too much forethought; however, I think PHP is already going in the right direction for enterprise level development. The object orientedness of the language is much improved since PHP3. They have the Smarty template engine which does a fairly good job of separating presentation from application. People should be encouraged to use it and I think as PHP apps get bigger, people will begin to realize the advantage to separating design logic from application logic. Most importantly, there are a variety of third-party developers creating frameworks such as the Horde framework or Blueshoes framework (I no affiliation with either). And that's great that there are such frameworks. It's not the job of the language developer to create the framework imho (e.g. CPAN does a great job supplementing Perl)
I for one, welcome our soon-to-be new Debian overlord. Soon-to-be, meaning as soon as they tabulate the votes, which, (again, obligatory), by Debian standards, will be some time after we colonize the moon.
Does anyone have this file in a non-wmv9 file format (i.e. some kind soul who's converted it) or have suggestions on getting wmv9 to work well under linux? My MPlayer (1.0pre5) doesn't seem to like it. Nor VLC (0.7) for that matter.
No, originally EA did not want to publish the game after Will Wright showed it to EA executives. When he threatened to walk out, EA wanted to keep the goose that lays the golden eggs and released the Sims. Future versions were of course encouraged by EA.
From the FlashMob FAQ: "How do I setup my own flashmob supercomputer?
First and foremost, if you can come to FlashMob I -- there's no substitute for first hand experience. Otherwise, start here and get some experience running a one node flashmob. Then run two. Then run ten. Then take over the world."
We're gonna to do it on your computer, then two computers, then ten computers, then your neighborhood. And then we're gonna do it at USF, then California, and then we'll take over the world! YEEEEEEAAARRRRGGHHH!!!
What about a game like Ghost Recon or SOCOM where signaling can be just as effective as voice (and maybe even adding a 'cool' factor to the game) and perhaps if the game were to do something like in NS or Counter-Strike (a current or soon to be feature? I can't remember) where voice communications can be overheard by the opposing team? Or how about a game like DDR? I think a game of DDR over internet could be very cool if you could see your opponent/partner. It's not just about being useful either, it's about enhancing the game experience.
These schools churned out tons of useless "educated" people with little added value from their educational experience. The only purpose that these institutions had was to dilute the talent within the IT and computer engineering fields. I say good riddance!
That's essentially what most big companies do. They pay tons of money. I can't really find any exact numbers on this, but Microsoft paid about $400M to buy Rare for exclusive content so that kind of gives you a barometer of how much they are willing to pay for exclusive content especially since Rare hasn't been a huge development house as of late (at least I don't recall them releasing any huge products recently). Sony has deals with Formula One and the Tomb Raider franchise which I am sure are valued in the millions as well.
What do you think of hardware manufacturers locking in games to certain platforms, whether a territorial decision or a universal one?
This is where the companies actually make money - through software and licensing fees for the platform. They always lose money on hardware and securing exclusive titles is one of the only ways to make money. Exclusive content is one method that they can try to guarantee licensing revenue for a that platform (since the amount is actually tied into the number of games they sell).
Now, some people might not like this, but I will try to draw an analogy here. Does your copy of iMovie run on Windows XP? iMovie works the same for Apple the way that exclusive content works for game console manufacturers. However, in Apple's case, it's the reverse: they make money on the hardware and not so much the OS.
Ah, waste perhaps, but perhaps not. With every research initiative, many spin-offs that are semi-related to the original work are created. Who knows what researchers may find as a result of trying to do this kind of research. Many of the great discoveries in science in the past have come from accidents or mistakes in the process of research. Or, sometimes, military research goes directly into the commercial market: GPS, nightvision, etc.
Pretty cool idea at the end there about building a console system for PC that uses Live CDs to power it. However, the lack of a hard disk in your specs doesn't work too well when:
- the console is used to web surf or check e-mail, some local storage may be required
- games typically have large saves on the order of several megabytes, USB memory wouldn't be practical
- why bother with a fast burner, there's no media to burn... I can't even d/l a new distro to disk.
- mods/new maps/etc. to games? Where will these go?
Those are just some problems of not having a hard disk and probably apply to the next generation Xbox (and why it should keep the hard disk).
Slashdot Mirror
What's to insure the trust within this project? Call me a cynic, but what's preventing some jerk from swapping some bytes in his set of data before sending it off, thus, rendering your combined result different from what you intended?
For the most part, titles that go from game to movie or movie to game have been terrible (Super Mario Bros., Enter the Matrix, Street Fighter 2, etc.) However, I can only see the growing interest of Hollywood into games as a good thing. Sure, it's been bad in the past, but that's mostly due to the fact that one side is only interested in capitalizing off the title to get some extra bucks (like LOTR or the Matrix). There wasn't a serious amount of forethought put into it (at least it seems to me) but more of a "Hey, this is a successful franchise, let's build a game/movie out of it" (game/movie depending on which direction) "so that we can get more money."
With this increased input and interaction from movie makers, games stand a good chance to do better where they've generally failed: story. And sometimes, games need a little push in the cinematic direction too. How many times have you seen a cutscene that made you puke or a default camera angle that was unusable? Or how about the terrible voice acting that seems to be a hallmark of so many games? And boy oh boy, story... imagine if a lot of games got a good push in that direction. Sure, there are been some games with interesting/excellent stories in the past (HL, Deus Ex, LucasArts adventure games, and others come to mind), but the majority of games do not have a good story - almost all FPS, most RTS, some MMORPG, most platformers, and the list goes on. Maybe finally, it will be the norm for games to have intriguiging story lines with good dialogue.
Well, it could have been a command, making it not a fragment. I was just trying to be funny anyways, but apparently the mods didn't think so. It'd odd, every time I attempt humor on slashdot, I usually fail.
play with grammer.
Play with spelling. (It's "grammar")This is completely false. When I was a tiny baby, my dad watched sports and he would seat me next to him to watch sports on TV.
What was I talking about again? I love sports. Wait, was I talking about sports or TV?
I think SportsCenter is on. Bye.
It should be pretty easy to get back into the business of coding. Will you want your ticket for New Delhi or Calcutta?
helicopter coolness
I do agree that all too often applications are rammed into PHP without too much forethought; however, I think PHP is already going in the right direction for enterprise level development. The object orientedness of the language is much improved since PHP3. They have the Smarty template engine which does a fairly good job of separating presentation from application. People should be encouraged to use it and I think as PHP apps get bigger, people will begin to realize the advantage to separating design logic from application logic. Most importantly, there are a variety of third-party developers creating frameworks such as the Horde framework or Blueshoes framework (I no affiliation with either). And that's great that there are such frameworks. It's not the job of the language developer to create the framework imho (e.g. CPAN does a great job supplementing Perl)
I for one, welcome our soon-to-be new Debian overlord. Soon-to-be, meaning as soon as they tabulate the votes, which, (again, obligatory), by Debian standards, will be some time after we colonize the moon.
Learn typography. You'll get tons out of it because a lot of the things you'd learn that apply to print media regarding text apply to the web.
that the wine has taken effect.
Oops. Of course I meant:
- Yellow Dog
You mean like:
- Red Hat
- OrangeLinux
- Yellow Dog
- Blue Linux
- Green
Does anyone have this file in a non-wmv9 file format (i.e. some kind soul who's converted it) or have suggestions on getting wmv9 to work well under linux? My MPlayer (1.0pre5) doesn't seem to like it. Nor VLC (0.7) for that matter.
By using an Anton Pilar act, SCO raided ATO offices demanding a AUD$904.32 (USD$699) licensing fee for each CPU.
No, originally EA did not want to publish the game after Will Wright showed it to EA executives. When he threatened to walk out, EA wanted to keep the goose that lays the golden eggs and released the Sims. Future versions were of course encouraged by EA.
From the FlashMob FAQ:
"How do I setup my own flashmob supercomputer? First and foremost, if you can come to FlashMob I -- there's no substitute for first hand experience. Otherwise, start here and get some experience running a one node flashmob. Then run two. Then run ten. Then take over the world."
We're gonna to do it on your computer, then two computers, then ten computers, then your neighborhood. And then we're gonna do it at USF, then California, and then we'll take over the world! YEEEEEEAAARRRRGGHHH!!!
What about a game like Ghost Recon or SOCOM where signaling can be just as effective as voice (and maybe even adding a 'cool' factor to the game) and perhaps if the game were to do something like in NS or Counter-Strike (a current or soon to be feature? I can't remember) where voice communications can be overheard by the opposing team? Or how about a game like DDR? I think a game of DDR over internet could be very cool if you could see your opponent/partner. It's not just about being useful either, it's about enhancing the game experience.
These schools churned out tons of useless "educated" people with little added value from their educational experience. The only purpose that these institutions had was to dilute the talent within the IT and computer engineering fields. I say good riddance!
So apparently, "synaptic strength was enhanced."
Does this mean I'll need to upgrade my apt-get?
you play video games?
Sony would either have to pay a TON of money...
That's essentially what most big companies do. They pay tons of money. I can't really find any exact numbers on this, but Microsoft paid about $400M to buy Rare for exclusive content so that kind of gives you a barometer of how much they are willing to pay for exclusive content especially since Rare hasn't been a huge development house as of late (at least I don't recall them releasing any huge products recently). Sony has deals with Formula One and the Tomb Raider franchise which I am sure are valued in the millions as well.
What do you think of hardware manufacturers locking in games to certain platforms, whether a territorial decision or a universal one?
This is where the companies actually make money - through software and licensing fees for the platform. They always lose money on hardware and securing exclusive titles is one of the only ways to make money. Exclusive content is one method that they can try to guarantee licensing revenue for a that platform (since the amount is actually tied into the number of games they sell).
Now, some people might not like this, but I will try to draw an analogy here. Does your copy of iMovie run on Windows XP? iMovie works the same for Apple the way that exclusive content works for game console manufacturers. However, in Apple's case, it's the reverse: they make money on the hardware and not so much the OS.
Ah, waste perhaps, but perhaps not. With every research initiative, many spin-offs that are semi-related to the original work are created. Who knows what researchers may find as a result of trying to do this kind of research. Many of the great discoveries in science in the past have come from accidents or mistakes in the process of research. Or, sometimes, military research goes directly into the commercial market: GPS, nightvision, etc.
Pretty cool idea at the end there about building a console system for PC that uses Live CDs to power it. However, the lack of a hard disk in your specs doesn't work too well when:
- the console is used to web surf or check e-mail, some local storage may be required
- games typically have large saves on the order of several megabytes, USB memory wouldn't be practical
- why bother with a fast burner, there's no media to burn... I can't even d/l a new distro to disk.
- mods/new maps/etc. to games? Where will these go?
Those are just some problems of not having a hard disk and probably apply to the next generation Xbox (and why it should keep the hard disk).