I tried a virtualboy at a game store a few times and while 3D is mildly interesting there are just so many ways for it to go wrong, lets also not forget that the games available for these systems are retreads. The whole game industry has really stagnated and has started to resort to gimmickry rather then focus on the software end of it, the really need to be focusing on reducing costs and getting game development down to a science. When so many games end up being lackluster or retreads there is a serious problem when you have to resort to 3D.
I don't do ideology. But I do believe in protecting the weak from the strong and anyone who believes ideology (especially free market ideology) is the solution to all problems clearly is incapable of doing evidence based analysis. One should always do scientific (empirical analysis) and NEVER approach something in an ideological manner.
More importantly just because you have anecdotes of knowing business people 'working hard' doesn't mean anything there are plenty of other reasons people succeed or get rich that have nothing to do with ideology but rather with facts and counter-intuitive truths that are not obvious to armchair politics.
Suppose I told you there were ways to get fantastically wealthy without every touching the labor market or ever running a business and that because I used them to make myself wealthy I know for a fact that free market ideology is seriously in error because it does not take into account historical contingency as well as how human institutions are structured by interests in the world economy.
"but is there evidence of your previously claimed assault by the U.S.?"
Sigh.. the book by George Grant DOCUMENTS instances of the canadian government giving in such as american nuclear weapons on canadian soil (how we totally bowed to US pressure) another one was the NAFTA agreement. There is ABUNDANT evidence of the US exerting pressure on us, there are sections of the upper classes in parts of the US and canada that despise our humanitarian welfare state, which isn't even all that humanitarian anymore since Mike Harris froze disability and slashed welfare rates. Stephen harper is a prime example if you look at his own comments on canada (which you can find all over the net).
If you watch ohcanadamovie the guys who made it DID INTERVIEWS with former prime minster John turner (on record) and Mr turner says "they (corporate executives) are hell bent on selling out Canadian sovereignty".
Especially the Canadian council of chief executives. These powerful people share the same ideology as many american executives where any hint of social development is insulted as "communist" or "socialist" (typical of reactionary thinking of the hard right).
These rich business people are insulated from the real world having too much money which allows their ego to inflated beyond all reason and they think they know better then everyone else. It is a typical american trait especially of America's upper classes.
I doubt you have more then a passing interest in Canadian politics and Canadian/US relations. The liberals have been chipping away at Canadian social programs after Trudeau. The privatized national debt to foreign bond holders was the whole reason Bob Rae could not keep his promises regarding social spending (this is documented in the ohcanadamovie by elizabeth may on record but there are also other official sources besies may that also say the same thing).
You have to understand all this is happening because canada is the last nation on earth with a huge amount of resources and there is no way Washington wants us to survive. Canada is being assaulted covertly and not so covertly by interests both domestic (US) and foreign.
... have lost their ability to have confidence in themselves. The games are now designed around what they perceive 'the audience' wants, starcraft 1 was such a hit BECAUSE the design team did not have pressure of korean pro gaming to stifle their creativity.
Starcraft 2 had to be the most conservative and underwhelming sequel of all time. Not only that the single player story felt like an alternate starcraft universe that had very little to do with the first game. It just goes to show that 12 years is too long a time to wait between sequels for a hit game to keep continuity since most of the original developers of Starcraft 1 were long gone by the time SC2 was released.
The internet has become an echo chamber for ignorant fans and developers to heap praise on themselves when the games they are putting out are conservative to mediocre at best simply because there are so many blind fanboys these days.
"The soviet command economy collapsed rather spectacularly, and wasn't that wonderful for the comrades (slave laborers) who had to live and die with it."
The same can be said of capitalism: Mental illness, depression, suicide, heart disease, foreign imperialist wars (america) and early death. I really REALLY hate the "capitalism is the win! it has never killed anyone!" bullshit that many people on slashdot believe. Capitalism in earlier era's was just as brutal as anything out of the soviet union let us not forget that CAPITALISM spawned it's own nemesis because it was so cruel historically speaking.
"The unfortunate side effect is that this is a shift in perception, one from when people wanted to be well rounded and enlightened, to one where people merely want to learn a skill and make money."
The problem is there is too much people want to experience today and too much work. Over the centuries education as we know it was not a requirement for existence. Over the last few hundred years public schools were invented to deal with the demands of the industrial revolution. You have to understand the very origin of schooling for the masses. What you're talking about is schooling for the elite, the people who could afford to be learned. People who had enough money/sheer interest to enjoy education for it's own sake.
The educational requirements today just to exist keep going up and hence this is why universities are flooded with applicants who want skills for money. It's the natural outgrowth of needing more and more just to earn a living, or at least it is from societies perspective whether it is true or not.
"It would be pretty stupid for any Christian to say that the Earth is a meager 6000 years old, yet they do it anyway."
They do it because they understand the principles of their faith, the fact that death exists in the world and entered through disobedience. If the story is allegorical then the christian faith is a sham. God dealing out death as punishment makes no sense in an evolutionary world view no matter how the liberal allegorical Christians try to spin it. The purpose of the christian faith is redemption from sin by Christ, without any historical basis for death as punishment the whole thing falls to pieces. Religion in general is just mental gibberish no matter how more "educated" Christians try to spin it.
Romans 5:12: "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned--"
Romans 5:14 "Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come."
"For true nerds, nvidia is the only game in town."
I was a nvidia fanboy since around the GF2 onward but I'm now a former nvidia nerd since I took a gamble on the 5870 and I have had no problems with it in any game I play.
The only time's I've ever had issues is if I was pushing the card too hard (overclocking it) and overheating it. I imagine many peoples "blue screens" come from poor cooling/ventilation or bad powersupply.
Yes in fact it is, when people lose their jobs because of technological advancement they have no means of protecting themselves, they don't have 'job copyrights' to protect their position. Copyright has always just been an attempt at monopoly and it stifles the search for alternative business models. Americans are just greedy pigs lets just face this fact. Games despite being able to be pirated since the beginning of the computer became a billion dollar industry. Music and movies despite the advancements of the VCR, beta max, CD recorders, cassette tapes, still became a billion dollar industry. You have your facts backwards - people know that good product deserves to be paid for. The internet now allows digital socialism (i.e. we get to try your product and then decide to pay for it or not depending on it's quality) For too long companies have been able to absolute push garbage, the internet gives these companies competition.
Valve has the right idea - even though I'm not particularly a fan of their DRM - make sure what you are offering is better then the alternative.
Economic growth is only part of the solution since technological disruption leaves masses of people unemployed and its only going to get worse over the long term, the rate at which jobs are displaced will continue to increase over time so just saying 'we have to get them a functioning economy' is also not a cure all in the slightest.
... I'm serious all this talk about work is not SOUND ANALYSIS it is more typical american faith based moralizing. The fact that your post got modded insightful is disturbing enough and just lends credence to the stereotype of ignorance of many americans. Lets have more real scientific analysis and less moral blathering.
I got a better historical hypothesis : Capitalism over the long term creates unsustainable societies, given that most people in the world are average. Average jobs keep being destroyed by technological displacement or moved to cheaper countries, thereby having available jobs and their livable wage pushed downward so that only a smaller percentage of the population can do 'economically competitive' work. Over time work at a livable wage that is available gets further out of reach for the common man. Partially due to technological disruption and societies ability to do more with less most people end up doing jobs that produce nothing (finance/service sector) or busywork like expanding university into an education 'industry' to keep people employed/money moving around.
Just because people are employed and money is shuffling does not mean they are doing things that are intelligent or that have long term value for the world at all. What actually is going on in 'the economy' matters much more then just having people create needless work.
This is the problem with anecdotal analysis, it doesn't do serious analysis it blusters its way to the conclusion it wants.
"DirectX has had a huge positive influence on Windows and Xbox gaming."
At the very beginning it had a HUGE NEGATIVE influence, so negative in fact that many games required you to 'reboot in MS-DOS mode'. Direct X didn't start becoming good until about 5-6. Just try playing an old copy of mechwarrior 2 for windows and see what I mean.
YES FACTS... like some of the most important scientists in history were gasp... religious and did fine scientific work just fine.
"A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."--Max Planck
Religious scientists who are highly respected in scientific history.
Everyone that has replied to my post simply doesn't get it. The same kinds of stuff that go on with religion happen with fads and false models in science which lead Max planck to say:
"A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."--Max Planck
Religious scientists who are highly respected in scientific history.
"Believing in creationism is a sure sign of a bad scientist. "
I don't think you understand that people can compartmentalize just fine. Most peoples religious beliefs do not effect their work, many of histories greatest scientists were also pretty kooky by today's standards.
The biggest problem is memory bandwidth. GPU's are fast because of their high throughput, the problem is CPU's won't ever have enough memory on die to keep up despite the communications. It's a trade off. I remember Mark rein of epic games saying on-die CPU's would kill video cards but they never did, because most people don't understand that performance is about trade offs.
Slashdot Mirror
"we'd like same time to digest and debate issues rather than being forced to assimilate everything in a weekend."
Problem is people don't think like that at all, science shows that people will clearly come to the wrong conclusions even when told the facts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
I tried a virtualboy at a game store a few times and while 3D is mildly interesting there are just so many ways for it to go wrong, lets also not forget that the games available for these systems are retreads. The whole game industry has really stagnated and has started to resort to gimmickry rather then focus on the software end of it, the really need to be focusing on reducing costs and getting game development down to a science. When so many games end up being lackluster or retreads there is a serious problem when you have to resort to 3D.
I don't do ideology. But I do believe in protecting the weak from the strong and anyone who believes ideology (especially free market ideology) is the solution to all problems clearly is incapable of doing evidence based analysis. One should always do scientific (empirical analysis) and NEVER approach something in an ideological manner.
More importantly just because you have anecdotes of knowing business people 'working hard' doesn't mean anything there are plenty of other reasons people succeed or get rich that have nothing to do with ideology but rather with facts and counter-intuitive truths that are not obvious to armchair politics.
Suppose I told you there were ways to get fantastically wealthy without every touching the labor market or ever running a business and that because I used them to make myself wealthy I know for a fact that free market ideology is seriously in error because it does not take into account historical contingency as well as how human institutions are structured by interests in the world economy.
"but is there evidence of your previously claimed assault by the U.S.?"
Sigh.. the book by George Grant DOCUMENTS instances of the canadian government giving in such as american nuclear weapons on canadian soil (how we totally bowed to US pressure) another one was the NAFTA agreement. There is ABUNDANT evidence of the US exerting pressure on us, there are sections of the upper classes in parts of the US and canada that despise our humanitarian welfare state, which isn't even all that humanitarian anymore since Mike Harris froze disability and slashed welfare rates. Stephen harper is a prime example if you look at his own comments on canada (which you can find all over the net).
If you watch ohcanadamovie the guys who made it DID INTERVIEWS with former prime minster John turner (on record) and Mr turner says "they (corporate executives) are hell bent on selling out Canadian sovereignty".
Especially the Canadian council of chief executives. These powerful people share the same ideology as many american executives where any hint of social development is insulted as "communist" or "socialist" (typical of reactionary thinking of the hard right).
These rich business people are insulated from the real world having too much money which allows their ego to inflated beyond all reason and they think they know better then everyone else. It is a typical american trait especially of America's upper classes.
I doubt you have more then a passing interest in Canadian politics and Canadian/US relations. The liberals have been chipping away at Canadian social programs after Trudeau. The privatized national debt to foreign bond holders was the whole reason Bob Rae could not keep his promises regarding social spending (this is documented in the ohcanadamovie by elizabeth may on record but there are also other official sources besies may that also say the same thing).
A good place to keep up on the bs of the right.
http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/
Here is a history of the right in Canada and it's a long read...
http://harpercrusade.blogspot.com/
Another good book for you would be George Grant's lament of a nation.
http://www.amazon.com/Lament-Nation-Canadian-Nationalism-Anniversary/dp/0773530029/
Canada was bought and sold along time ago.
Mel hurtig - the truth about canada
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8D67YiLcOM
Oh canada our bought and sold out land (download torrent)
http://www.ohcanadamovie.com/
The unmaking of Canada (Book)
http://www.google.ca/#hl=en&source=hp&biw=740&bih=520&q=the+unmaking+of+canada&aq=f&aqi=g-v1&aql=&oq=&fp=23bbcb7fee7f599c
Mel hurtigs blog
http://melhurtig.ca/
You have to understand all this is happening because canada is the last nation on earth with a huge amount of resources and there is no way Washington wants us to survive. Canada is being assaulted covertly and not so covertly by interests both domestic (US) and foreign.
... have lost their ability to have confidence in themselves. The games are now designed around what they perceive 'the audience' wants, starcraft 1 was such a hit BECAUSE the design team did not have pressure of korean pro gaming to stifle their creativity.
Starcraft 2 had to be the most conservative and underwhelming sequel of all time. Not only that the single player story felt like an alternate starcraft universe that had very little to do with the first game. It just goes to show that 12 years is too long a time to wait between sequels for a hit game to keep continuity since most of the original developers of Starcraft 1 were long gone by the time SC2 was released.
The internet has become an echo chamber for ignorant fans and developers to heap praise on themselves when the games they are putting out are conservative to mediocre at best simply because there are so many blind fanboys these days.
Traditional VIDEOGAMING would be a better word but people who use 'traditional gaming' are speaking about video gaming specifically given the context.
... is just garbage and Australia and the RAND corporation SAYS it's garbage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITbGBmaqQkk
"The soviet command economy collapsed rather spectacularly, and wasn't that wonderful for the comrades (slave laborers) who had to live and die with it."
The same can be said of capitalism: Mental illness, depression, suicide, heart disease, foreign imperialist wars (america) and early death. I really REALLY hate the "capitalism is the win! it has never killed anyone!" bullshit that many people on slashdot believe. Capitalism in earlier era's was just as brutal as anything out of the soviet union let us not forget that CAPITALISM spawned it's own nemesis because it was so cruel historically speaking.
"The unfortunate side effect is that this is a shift in perception, one from when people wanted to be well rounded and enlightened, to one where people merely want to learn a skill and make money."
The problem is there is too much people want to experience today and too much work. Over the centuries education as we know it was not a requirement for existence. Over the last few hundred years public schools were invented to deal with the demands of the industrial revolution. You have to understand the very origin of schooling for the masses. What you're talking about is schooling for the elite, the people who could afford to be learned. People who had enough money/sheer interest to enjoy education for it's own sake.
The educational requirements today just to exist keep going up and hence this is why universities are flooded with applicants who want skills for money. It's the natural outgrowth of needing more and more just to earn a living, or at least it is from societies perspective whether it is true or not.
"Government of the people by the government, for the RICH CORPORATE SHAREHOLDERS"
Changed that for you.
"It would be pretty stupid for any Christian to say that the Earth is a meager 6000 years old, yet they do it anyway."
They do it because they understand the principles of their faith, the fact that death exists in the world and entered through disobedience. If the story is allegorical then the christian faith is a sham. God dealing out death as punishment makes no sense in an evolutionary world view no matter how the liberal allegorical Christians try to spin it. The purpose of the christian faith is redemption from sin by Christ, without any historical basis for death as punishment the whole thing falls to pieces. Religion in general is just mental gibberish no matter how more "educated" Christians try to spin it.
Romans 5:12: "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned--"
Romans 5:14 "Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come."
"blue screen" is code, I've actually NEVER had a blue screen only reboots from o/c the card too far (legit reason).
"For true nerds, nvidia is the only game in town."
I was a nvidia fanboy since around the GF2 onward but I'm now a former nvidia nerd since I took a gamble on the 5870 and I have had no problems with it in any game I play.
The only time's I've ever had issues is if I was pushing the card too hard (overclocking it) and overheating it. I imagine many peoples "blue screens" come from poor cooling/ventilation or bad powersupply.
"Note that this isn't a silly argument"
Yes in fact it is, when people lose their jobs because of technological advancement they have no means of protecting themselves, they don't have 'job copyrights' to protect their position. Copyright has always just been an attempt at monopoly and it stifles the search for alternative business models. Americans are just greedy pigs lets just face this fact. Games despite being able to be pirated since the beginning of the computer became a billion dollar industry. Music and movies despite the advancements of the VCR, beta max, CD recorders, cassette tapes, still became a billion dollar industry. You have your facts backwards - people know that good product deserves to be paid for. The internet now allows digital socialism (i.e. we get to try your product and then decide to pay for it or not depending on it's quality) For too long companies have been able to absolute push garbage, the internet gives these companies competition.
Valve has the right idea - even though I'm not particularly a fan of their DRM - make sure what you are offering is better then the alternative.
Economic growth is only part of the solution since technological disruption leaves masses of people unemployed and its only going to get worse over the long term, the rate at which jobs are displaced will continue to increase over time so just saying 'we have to get them a functioning economy' is also not a cure all in the slightest.
... I'm serious all this talk about work is not SOUND ANALYSIS it is more typical american faith based moralizing. The fact that your post got modded insightful is disturbing enough and just lends credence to the stereotype of ignorance of many americans. Lets have more real scientific analysis and less moral blathering.
I got a better historical hypothesis : Capitalism over the long term creates unsustainable societies, given that most people in the world are average. Average jobs keep being destroyed by technological displacement or moved to cheaper countries, thereby having available jobs and their livable wage pushed downward so that only a smaller percentage of the population can do 'economically competitive' work. Over time work at a livable wage that is available gets further out of reach for the common man. Partially due to technological disruption and societies ability to do more with less most people end up doing jobs that produce nothing (finance/service sector) or busywork like expanding university into an education 'industry' to keep people employed/money moving around.
Just because people are employed and money is shuffling does not mean they are doing things that are intelligent or that have long term value for the world at all. What actually is going on in 'the economy' matters much more then just having people create needless work.
This is the problem with anecdotal analysis, it doesn't do serious analysis it blusters its way to the conclusion it wants.
... a derivative work?
"DirectX has had a huge positive influence on Windows and Xbox gaming."
At the very beginning it had a HUGE NEGATIVE influence, so negative in fact that many games required you to 'reboot in MS-DOS mode'. Direct X didn't start becoming good until about 5-6. Just try playing an old copy of mechwarrior 2 for windows and see what I mean.
"But what can one legally do?"
The time for legality is over, unfortunately public ignorance, lack of intelligence and apathy is the issue.
YES FACTS... like some of the most important scientists in history were gasp... religious and did fine scientific work just fine.
"A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."--Max Planck
Religious scientists who are highly respected in scientific history.
Michael faraday
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday [wikipedia.org]
James clerk maxwell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell [wikipedia.org]
Everyone that has replied to my post simply doesn't get it. The same kinds of stuff that go on with religion happen with fads and false models in science which lead Max planck to say:
"A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."--Max Planck
Religious scientists who are highly respected in scientific history.
Michael faraday
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday
James clerk maxwell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell
The thing is human beings can hold silly beliefs and still do sound science despite their compartmentalization.
"Believing in creationism is a sure sign of a bad scientist. "
I don't think you understand that people can compartmentalize just fine. Most peoples religious beliefs do not effect their work, many of histories greatest scientists were also pretty kooky by today's standards.
The biggest problem is memory bandwidth. GPU's are fast because of their high throughput, the problem is CPU's won't ever have enough memory on die to keep up despite the communications. It's a trade off. I remember Mark rein of epic games saying on-die CPU's would kill video cards but they never did, because most people don't understand that performance is about trade offs.