Not since the internet, the problem with thin clients is it starts to create single point of failure. The great thing about the net is redundancy even if that comes at a cost it gives you extreme amounts of flexibility.
The great thing about the net is redundancy, is a site down? find it in cache's of the net.
The great irony is if he didn't want the limelight he shouldn't have submitted his work or been working on such problems in the first place. It's not a very bright thing to work on important problems which you will know if yousolve will bring you fame in advance and then turn around and say "I don't want the fame".
He signed up for it like an idiot whether he realizes it or not, you'd think he'd have the intelligence to understand the consequences of solving his own areas of study.
"Why does he have to take the money in order for it to be given to charity? If he doesn't want it why can't the Clay Mathematics Institute just donate it directly to charity?"
My point is just finding a way to make them look bad either by telling them to give it away or taking it himself and giving it away would be enough. That's my main problem he hasn't said anything, and I doubt the clay institute is just going to get up and give it away arbitrarily.
If his point is to make them look bad he's not doing it right, his cryptic response is likely not going to do anything.
He could simply state that openly, take the million dollars and give it away and chastize them for having prizes in the first place. If that was his goal it's the worst way to be doing it.
I don't think you get the point, he's denying it out of principle of being a decent human being, but he's not, he's just being a typical nerdy brat who doesn't get it.
He doesn't have to accept the million he can say "award it to so and so" and be done with it. The man is smart but he is no genius ethically, there is so much suffering in the world. Anyone with a brain would find some way to circulate that money to where it is needed in the world. It's not going to save the world but reducing the suffering in the world IMHO should be among the top goals of any intellectual worth his or her salt.
I disagree, I think he's being a douchebag. Anyone with a head would take a million dollars and use it to alleviate suffering of others if he was a decent man. This is where I think his principles have blinded him to the fact that their are still a lot of problems in the world and he could be helping out people who need it with that million.
"Combined with the allegations of vote fraud and voter suppression in opposition neighborhoods"
Except lets not mention the history of plunder of south america by americans and various peoples of the world shall we? Nor the constant lies and misinformation the US constantly puts out about Venezuela.
A list of great games which were commercial failures were:
-Freespace 2 -Planescape torment.
Even mentioning the name neverwinter should send chills down any RPG'ers spine. Neverwinter nights tried to do too much with too little budget, their idea's about tools were awesome but the main single player game suffered because of it. Doing a toolset is hard while doing a game at the sametime, truthfully some days I wish bioware had infinite money to have really made NWN shine, good ideas but the development time and resources for something like that to make it good would be like a decade.
It wasn't until mass effect/dragon age that Bioware really got back on track to making good games again. NWN could not hold a candle to bioware's previous RPG's and NWN couldn't decide if it wanted to be diablo'ish action RPG or a more party based RPG where the battle mechanics were abstracted from the player.
A big issue for me was that there was not enough NPC's in your party to have the sole focus entirely on your character. I kept wishing it played more like diablo because there wasn't enough to keep you busy before you were left doing nothing. It was one of the most boring games I had ever played on the PC. The pacing was slow just like MMO's where travel time was severely slow/gimped.
It's one of the things about MMO's that I hate the most is that they really ruined more actiony-rpg elements of older single player games when game companies went mad copying MMO's.
The problem was is putting boring crap from MMO's in in your single player RPG is bad, MMO's do it just to keep you from finishing the content too fast, but that kills the pacing of the game. A singleplayer game should always have good mechanics and pacing of battles / story but NWN had none of that, the only thing that tentatively saved it (years later) were the mods players made, and even then it was still god awfully boring because the main game was so unfinished.
"I have no problem with this additional content. How many people have there been that finished a good game and wished for more?"
This is what expansion packs are for. DLC is nickel and diming, I really hate the fact that there are so many people stupid enough to pay for that shit.
"If anything we should learn from our own history and the mistakes made in our own past and oppose suppression of free speech from the get go."
Except free speech is suppressed constantly in North America search for "gag order" and "corporation", how many gag orders have been issued for corporate malfeasance? Corporations use the legal system just as a government official can,and often ways it's much easier because you can just buy everyone off.
How many people don't speak out because they fear for their income? Or legal orders? A hell of a lot.
No I'm saying venezeula is going through a historical period many countries go through, you forget that south america is a political hotspot, contested resources, mass poverty. CIA involvement, etc, etc. The only way to really understand South america is to know it's history.
We tend to forget that we are spoiled we never had to live through shit like McCarthyism. Nor have we ever had to run a country after successfully revolution (cuba).
I'm not saying I agree with what is being done, I'm saying historically speaking one can't call the kettle black when the US and many other countries went through similar historical stages.
We tend to forget as gamers how unnatural using the gamepad for playing games was at first for many people, you know when our parents tried to pick up the controller and they could barely control the character? The great thing about the Wiimote and other motion is to try to come up with a control scheme that is more natural and integrates into what they already know unconsciously as human being.
Latin American history has had 500 years of looting and pillaging of natural resources by outsiders ranging from colonial Spain in the 1600s to U.S. multinational corporations of 20th century. It's no small wonder political turmoil exists there.
"I guess Chavez has decided to follow the same path that every other communist leader has followed? "We cannot allow openness if it means people will disagree with me."
Except the same thing happens in USA and canada, news sites tend not to want to tick off their friends and the people that pay their bills. It's the same thing in the end, Wikileaks has leaked more stuff in small time being around then all the big major newspapers combined over 30 years, you do know that right?
" A common theme in those articles are the gut-wrenching wild-ass-guesses that need to be made when breaking into a new genre."
Hahah well I don't buy that shit that "it's soo hard", almost all new IP's are retreads with reskinned lore/graphics.
MASS EFFECT 1 was an FPS with RPG stuff tacked on, ME2 was gears of war in the mass effect universe. Fable = action rpg, nothing really "new" about it except the universe. Dead space = another pseudo- thid person FPS from the third person.
All these new properties are little more then action games and same tired old tropes, where's the innovation?
"It is you that seems to not be playing any competitive Civ4."
This is the biggest lie I have ever seen, they've had two expansions since Civ 4, you know this right? If you're dying, you suck at civ. Don't blame the "stacks of doom". It's a big lie.
""Video game buyers are pretty fickle, and their answer to "what is fun" is generally "I know it when I see it"."
You do know that Mass effect 2 director said "listen to fans"? He said the MOST important thing you can do as a developer is listen to your fans critiques, they took a list of all the major complaints of Mass effect 1 and used it to design Mass effect 2. There are whole articles on it @ Gamasutra.
Academically analyzing games is fine, no doubt about it. But you have to remember games are huge projects and gluing those engineered pieces of work together by large teams is the hard part. Anyone with a degree of intelligence can analyze what is wrong with a game. You go to a major review site, pick the "criticism cream" of the crop (i.e. reviewers who know what is wrong with the game).
Games are developed via dialogue with one's customers. If a gamer orders steak, and you give him onions he's going to know "that's not steak".
Not all gamers are equally skilled at understanding what's broken with a game but intelligent gamers are, many gamers are better then many academics at knowing what makes a good game.
I've predicted which games will fail or be successful with a greater then 90% accuracy rate.
"Given that the PC gaming market is really a joke compared to the console market I think DirectX is really rather meaningless."
It's a joke because most PC games are bad ports of console games, Note the top games are all good games (with perhaps the exception of WoW). Too many PC games were just garbage, and lots of PC games could have done better if they were not released unfinished.
"Ok, geniuses. You've figured out how you should be running your company. If companies would just do these things, they would never find themselves in a position where they would be late in the first place."
I'm sorry but this is nonsense, in the real world all sorts of unexpected things happen or subtle flaws or errors you didn't know about can crop up that push projects back. Especially in the game industry - the preach iterative software development, if you're always iterating, you're constantly adding and removing stuff since there is no fixed design, you can't exactly have a "fixed schedule". It usually takes years of experience to develop an experienced team that can glue everything together into a good game.
Many teams in the game industry release half-ass stuff all the time, but the best ones get better over time. I've been really impressed by Mass effect 1, Mass effect 2 and dragon age, but these projects didn't drop out of the sky, they came after a long learning curve of how to manage game projects of that scope and complexity.
A lot of this has to do with overambitious targets, expectations and design goals, many companies bite off more work then they can chew because they are desperate for money, and this is not going to change. There are people at all levels who simply shouldn't be in the software industry at all but that's not going to change.
Slashdot Mirror
"Actually, it's all just one big cycle."
Not since the internet, the problem with thin clients is it starts to create single point of failure. The great thing about the net is redundancy even if that comes at a cost it gives you extreme amounts of flexibility.
The great thing about the net is redundancy, is a site down? find it in cache's of the net.
"and he really doesn't want the limelight."
The great irony is if he didn't want the limelight he shouldn't have submitted his work or been working on such problems in the first place. It's not a very bright thing to work on important problems which you will know if yousolve will bring you fame in advance and then turn around and say "I don't want the fame".
He signed up for it like an idiot whether he realizes it or not, you'd think he'd have the intelligence to understand the consequences of solving his own areas of study.
"Why does he have to take the money in order for it to be given to charity? If he doesn't want it why can't the Clay Mathematics Institute just donate it directly to charity?"
My point is just finding a way to make them look bad either by telling them to give it away or taking it himself and giving it away would be enough. That's my main problem he hasn't said anything, and I doubt the clay institute is just going to get up and give it away arbitrarily.
If his point is to make them look bad he's not doing it right, his cryptic response is likely not going to do anything.
He could simply state that openly, take the million dollars and give it away and chastize them for having prizes in the first place. If that was his goal it's the worst way to be doing it.
I don't think you get the point, he's denying it out of principle of being a decent human being, but he's not, he's just being a typical nerdy brat who doesn't get it.
He doesn't have to accept the million he can say "award it to so and so" and be done with it. The man is smart but he is no genius ethically, there is so much suffering in the world. Anyone with a brain would find some way to circulate that money to where it is needed in the world. It's not going to save the world but reducing the suffering in the world IMHO should be among the top goals of any intellectual worth his or her salt.
"Patron saint of basement dwellers everywhere."
I disagree, I think he's being a douchebag. Anyone with a head would take a million dollars and use it to alleviate suffering of others if he was a decent man. This is where I think his principles have blinded him to the fact that their are still a lot of problems in the world and he could be helping out people who need it with that million.
"What was important was that the masses should believe in ideology and obey."
You mean like americans?
"Combined with the allegations of vote fraud and voter suppression in opposition neighborhoods"
Except lets not mention the history of plunder of south america by americans and various peoples of the world shall we? Nor the constant lies and misinformation the US constantly puts out about Venezuela.
http://www.amazon.com/Open-Veins-Latin-America-Centuries/dp/0853459908/
... thank you.
Thanks for the heads up, didn't realize.
... was garbage.
A list of great games which were commercial failures were:
-Freespace 2
-Planescape torment.
Even mentioning the name neverwinter should send chills down any RPG'ers spine. Neverwinter nights tried to do too much with too little budget, their idea's about tools were awesome but the main single player game suffered because of it. Doing a toolset is hard while doing a game at the sametime, truthfully some days I wish bioware had infinite money to have really made NWN shine, good ideas but the development time and resources for something like that to make it good would be like a decade.
It wasn't until mass effect/dragon age that Bioware really got back on track to making good games again. NWN could not hold a candle to bioware's previous RPG's and NWN couldn't decide if it wanted to be diablo'ish action RPG or a more party based RPG where the battle mechanics were abstracted from the player.
A big issue for me was that there was not enough NPC's in your party to have the sole focus entirely on your character. I kept wishing it played more like diablo because there wasn't enough to keep you busy before you were left doing nothing. It was one of the most boring games I had ever played on the PC. The pacing was slow just like MMO's where travel time was severely slow/gimped.
It's one of the things about MMO's that I hate the most is that they really ruined more actiony-rpg elements of older single player games when game companies went mad copying MMO's.
The problem was is putting boring crap from MMO's in in your single player RPG is bad, MMO's do it just to keep you from finishing the content too fast, but that kills the pacing of the game. A singleplayer game should always have good mechanics and pacing of battles / story but NWN had none of that, the only thing that tentatively saved it (years later) were the mods players made, and even then it was still god awfully boring because the main game was so unfinished.
"I have no problem with this additional content. How many people have there been that finished a good game and wished for more?"
This is what expansion packs are for. DLC is nickel and diming, I really hate the fact that there are so many people stupid enough to pay for that shit.
"If anything we should learn from our own history and the mistakes made in our own past and oppose suppression of free speech from the get go."
Except free speech is suppressed constantly in North America search for "gag order" and "corporation", how many gag orders have been issued for corporate malfeasance? Corporations use the legal system just as a government official can,and often ways it's much easier because you can just buy everyone off.
How many people don't speak out because they fear for their income? Or legal orders? A hell of a lot.
No I'm saying venezeula is going through a historical period many countries go through, you forget that south america is a political hotspot, contested resources, mass poverty. CIA involvement, etc, etc. The only way to really understand South america is to know it's history.
We tend to forget that we are spoiled we never had to live through shit like McCarthyism. Nor have we ever had to run a country after successfully revolution (cuba).
I'm not saying I agree with what is being done, I'm saying historically speaking one can't call the kettle black when the US and many other countries went through similar historical stages.
We tend to forget as gamers how unnatural using the gamepad for playing games was at first for many people, you know when our parents tried to pick up the controller and they could barely control the character? The great thing about the Wiimote and other motion is to try to come up with a control scheme that is more natural and integrates into what they already know unconsciously as human being.
"In America I can post this:
"News just in! Obama caught fucking a goat!!!"
All I have to say to that is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
Latin American history has had 500 years of looting and pillaging of natural resources by outsiders ranging from colonial Spain in the 1600s to U.S. multinational corporations of 20th century. It's no small wonder political turmoil exists there.
"I guess Chavez has decided to follow the same path that every other communist leader has followed? "We cannot allow openness if it means people will disagree with me."
Except the same thing happens in USA and canada, news sites tend not to want to tick off their friends and the people that pay their bills. It's the same thing in the end, Wikileaks has leaked more stuff in small time being around then all the big major newspapers combined over 30 years, you do know that right?
This is a brilliant post, wish I had the mod points.
" A common theme in those articles are the gut-wrenching wild-ass-guesses that need to be made when breaking into a new genre."
Hahah well I don't buy that shit that "it's soo hard", almost all new IP's are retreads with reskinned lore/graphics.
MASS EFFECT 1 was an FPS with RPG stuff tacked on, ME2 was gears of war in the mass effect universe.
Fable = action rpg, nothing really "new" about it except the universe.
Dead space = another pseudo- thid person FPS from the third person.
All these new properties are little more then action games and same tired old tropes, where's the innovation?
"It is you that seems to not be playing any competitive Civ4."
This is the biggest lie I have ever seen, they've had two expansions since Civ 4, you know this right? If you're dying, you suck at civ. Don't blame the "stacks of doom". It's a big lie.
""Video game buyers are pretty fickle, and their answer to "what is fun" is generally "I know it when I see it"."
You do know that Mass effect 2 director said "listen to fans"? He said the MOST important thing you can do as a developer is listen to your fans critiques, they took a list of all the major complaints of Mass effect 1 and used it to design Mass effect 2. There are whole articles on it @ Gamasutra.
Academically analyzing games is fine, no doubt about it. But you have to remember games are huge projects and gluing those engineered pieces of work together by large teams is the hard part. Anyone with a degree of intelligence can analyze what is wrong with a game. You go to a major review site, pick the "criticism cream" of the crop (i.e. reviewers who know what is wrong with the game).
Games are developed via dialogue with one's customers. If a gamer orders steak, and you give him onions he's going to know "that's not steak".
Not all gamers are equally skilled at understanding what's broken with a game but intelligent gamers are, many gamers are better then many academics at knowing what makes a good game.
I've predicted which games will fail or be successful with a greater then 90% accuracy rate.
"Given that the PC gaming market is really a joke compared to the console market I think DirectX is really rather meaningless."
It's a joke because most PC games are bad ports of console games, Note the top games are all good games (with perhaps the exception of WoW). Too many PC games were just garbage, and lots of PC games could have done better if they were not released unfinished.
"..the only problem is, the civ4 stacks of doom arrive thousands of years before aircraft are invented."
This is what catapults are for, and they come long before aircraft, did you even play Civ? Seriously?
"Ok, geniuses. You've figured out how you should be running your company. If companies would just do these things, they would never find themselves in a position where they would be late in the first place."
I'm sorry but this is nonsense, in the real world all sorts of unexpected things happen or subtle flaws or errors you didn't know about can crop up that push projects back. Especially in the game industry - the preach iterative software development, if you're always iterating, you're constantly adding and removing stuff since there is no fixed design, you can't exactly have a "fixed schedule". It usually takes years of experience to develop an experienced team that can glue everything together into a good game.
Many teams in the game industry release half-ass stuff all the time, but the best ones get better over time. I've been really impressed by Mass effect 1, Mass effect 2 and dragon age, but these projects didn't drop out of the sky, they came after a long learning curve of how to manage game projects of that scope and complexity.
A lot of this has to do with overambitious targets, expectations and design goals, many companies bite off more work then they can chew because they are desperate for money, and this is not going to change. There are people at all levels who simply shouldn't be in the software industry at all but that's not going to change.