Truth be told it's all bullshit. Many libraries never have the books you need, everytime I've needed a book I've had to send wait while using intralibrary loans, quite frankly I'm glad google is sucking back the worlds knowledge. In the digital age, I should be able to search a book, cut and paste text from a book, etc. You can't do that very easy with traditional deadtree books. They both have a place, but digitizing the worlds books can only be a boon for civilization as a whole. This is where knowledge > profits IMHO.
... I'd really like it of gamers/customers had the ability to take back rights of abandonware or games and properties that are just being sat on, and also have their rights expanded as investors/co-owners in some capacity because right now the indivduals rights are being abused willy nilly.
I would have loved to see what would have happened to the fan made chrono trigger resurrection if Square had not threatened them:
Someone said earlier: "Programmers are neither abstractly creative nor socially comfortable by default"
I really have qualms with this. Software is not like other discplines. The real fact of the matter is most programmers are poor in math and computer science AND many programmers didn't have early hardware to tinker with.
Andre lamothe was so frustrated by coders lack of understanding of hardware, math and algorithms he started his own site.
IMHO I would have killed for a site like this when I was younger, in the 'pre-internet' days when I was still in highschool. Personally our real problem is that kids are not guided where they need to be and everyone thinks they 'know' what a software engineer needs to know when they don't.
It also doesn't help that many technically inclined kids are ostracized because they happen to be interested in sciency or electronicy things. Not to mention some coders surely need some social skills classes as well as weight loss classes (to boost their social skills confidence).
Personally if I were running a business I would pay bonus's to coders that went to toastmasters, etc and improved their interpersonal communication skills. Businesses just have to start demanding and REWARDING this from their workforce if they want to see it. The problem is business's treat coders/programmers like unskilled laborers to be used and abused for the lowest wages possible. Is it any wonder that no one really wants to improve given the sorry situation in software development?
The best coders I've ever met were tinkerers. They sat there and tinkered with shit for hours plugging away exploring their curiousity. They had an overwhelming desire to master their discipline, and many were also mathematically inclined.
Electronics, math and coding have a lot in common, there are deep relationships between electronics, coding and math. The problem is you will not find most or all the skills to run a business well monolithically in one person, since the education system is set up so poorly.
Pfft... my point is the linux community isn't doing anything to help companies create a unified driver that works on all systems. While I may be off with the details, the fact that no one likes maintaining codebases for different platforms is spot on.
That's the point I made which still stands. Inter-operability with reduced hardware developer burden in terms of drivers, etc, is critical.
The 275 is a 285 with rops disabled, that's the only difference, or Core 216 with ROPS enabled. But they are the same chip the GT200. If you look at the specs it's obvious they based the 275 around the GTX 260 reference design PCB based on the Core 216/GTX 260.
Either way I was totally underwhelmed by both cards in terms of performance, I'm not sure why everyone is getting their panties in a bunch. Anyone owning 8800 GTS / GTX from the last gen still can play every game on the market.
For anyone who owns and 8800 GTS / GTX it's best to wait for the next generation rather then waste $ on this one, when the 4870 and GT200 first came out, it was obvious that both parts were underwhelming performers.
They're attempting to force "heavy users" to pony up for bandwidth that already exists in abundance in their network.
My own ISP started bandwidth capping in the last year and a half and cut me down to 60GB without notice and I was pissed. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if the *IAA's of the world are influencing these decisions.
"Linux has plenty of critics. Developers are critical of their own code."
I'm sorry but what linux needs is a bunch of windows power users and regular people trying to use the computer and criticizing it. The real problem is that if you had to sell linux to the masses, you'd have to please your customers.
I would venture to say that linux has tendency towards developer monoculture - i.e. you can tell it's made by devleopers/engineering types in that not enough processes are automated or self explantory, and often times there is peculiar behaviour when compared to mass market OS like windows. Next is that I'd give linux GUI's a makeover in terms of artistic layout and design. The one thing windows get's right is that it makes the environment appealing to users.
The biggest hurdle though IMHO is that there needs to be ONE driver/driver model for multiple OS's (win, linux, etc) so a driver team only has to write the damn driver once. Since the real problem is the enormous upkeep costs in terms of a companies developer time to develop drivers and deal with issues in an environment that is a moving target (i.e. being updated, etc)
That's the real problem with linux in that the linux developers don't really get that choices for key areas are often a bad thing and this causes segmentation for the average user and lack of hardware support.
Vista had enough issues with drivers when they updated the OS, you'd think the linux people would really want to be able to take an XP/vista driver and make it work for linux, find some way to plug emulate a win9x environment or wrap it so you could just plug it in and have the hardware friggin work.
"The Wii market isn't actually as big as it appears. In reality, it's quite possibly smaller than the 360 and PS3 markets."
I have qualms with this. The real reason the Wii isn't doing as well as the PS3 and Xbox in terms of games sales is... Developers and publishers were expecting the Gamecube #2 in terms of success and installed base and so focused all their resources towards Xbox 360 and PS3.
Game developers started planning and developing their games for PS3 and Xbox years in advance and wrote off the Wii as "Gamecube 2", do we not all remember the joke about how the Wii is just two gamecubes stuck together with duct-tape?
Developers balked at the lack of power for the GC and they were counting on the PS3 to be #1 again with Xbox 360 being #2. So they spent all their development effort towards them. Once the Wii took off developers and publishers were blindsided, and the simple fact is : They didn't commit resources to the platform years in advance.
Lets not forget that developing games requires years of development, and no one in the developer and publisher community was planning on the Wii being this successful in terms of hardware sales and installed base. The did the math and it didn't add up (then).
That's the REAL problem. I'd imagine most gamers have two console's today : PS3 + Wii or Xbox 360+ Wii, and the hardcore with all 3.
Sometimes I have to wonder who is running the show at these companies, Soul calibur 2 for the gamecube for instance sold over ~700K copies, and yet when soul calibur 3 arrived it never arrived on the cube despite the previous one almost breaking a million, and SC2 was cross platform and it certainly did break more then a million in sales, yet they stiffed over 700K fans on the GC with sequels.
This kind of bullshit is why game companies are where they are, there are paying audiences for their games, but then some clueless higher up decides "meh not worth it". The truth is the people running these businesses are fucking clueless about gaming, they've lost touch with the ir customers, and think it's all about making it more like the movies, which is just bullshit.
I'm not the only tired of the endless FMV in place of gameplay (Metal gear solid 4, I'm looking at you!)
You're not making a movie, you're making a game. Many development houses don't seem to get this. Sure gaming has a lot to learn from techniques from the movie industry, but it is NOT the movie industry, a couple of the games that got this right:
God of war and it's sequel, and Call of duty 4 Modern warfare, both excellent games who's developers seem to understand - don't make your game into a movie, take the best elements of movies and adapt them for the game
... I think that's the real issue people can't deal with. Nature doesn't care who or what you are attracted to, you just are.
The fact that is most men and women are attracted to the what they are attracted to and good looks regardless of age.
We've probably all seen this time and time again, when a beautiful little girl who we all know is going to grow up to be a looker enters the room and EVERYONE (men and women) damn well treats her sweeter then everyone else as well as getting a lot of the attention.
Truth be told, a lot of men and women (and kids nearing puberty, etc) are going to experiment in their imagination things that are NC17 rated or worse, and this has been going on since the beginning of time, if we dumped out all the dirty sexual thoughts people thought, I'd bet 99% of the world would be convicted of something they public ally decry.
Humans are still wild animals, despite their big brains, people just don't want to accept it.
This all comes down to the american capitalist, hyper propertarian view of copyright which other countries are free to reject. This american centrism discussion of IP is what people are railing against.
If we had more people like John carmack in the world, (giving away his sourcecode) and letting games fall into what is practically public domain, IP wouldn't be such a problem.
We have too many idiots who want to use IP to privately tax creativity and innovation to death. We have orphan works that people can't touch because of IP, when's the last time anything entered public domain?
Truth be told the sheeple are feeding the King georges of corporate world, private profit can be abused and turned into a PRIVATE tax of an unelected body of people and framed as "trade", when it's nothing but another form of totalitarianism and corporate protectionism, or simply - rule by price.
Next is the fact that corporations are trying to stop people from owning anything, and the pirate bay is a good reaction against that despite what it's users intentions are. I'm glad they exist as a counterweight to all corporate bullshit that keeps getting passed because their are not enough intelligent people in the world to stop the army of lawyers and deep pockets in washington and other governments of the world who are bought and paid for by these shills.
"(Btw, I mostly liked your post, but comments about "not sure you're old enough or aware enough" do make you sound a bit petulent.)"
It wasn't meant as a jab or petulence, I couldn't gauge by your post whether you were an "oldbie" or a "newbie" releatively speaking. I agree with most of what you said as well.
"The problem is that, despite what people like to think, experimentation and innovation don't often make for very good games."
I disagree, peter has had hit games (through his experimentation) out of the gate (populous comes to mind, as well as syndicate, etc), of which which were totally original projects - and hit the ground running.
Sometimes it's just that the first games that experiment with new ideas usually don't get everything right and some games (black and white as you mentioned) ran into problems where the developer (peter) was clueless himself in where the fun in his creative vision was, he has said so himself by the way in more recent interviews that can be found by googling around.
Peter has some serious street cred, I'm not sure you're old enough (or aware enough) of all the games Peter has been involved in - us older gamers know Bullfrog productions (list of games @ link below)
Game developers have been in the process of learning to make better video games over the years, the problem was - they didn't have a process for finding the fun in games, that is now becoming a lot more of a scientifically based process of hypothesis - testing and experimentation before a game is released.
Even developers who take what already works, STILL have problems getting it right. Supreme commander comes to mind, where Chris taylor was disappointed they fell back on tanks and artillery and making the races mostly the same, when he wanted race diversity.
No game would have ever been made if it wasn't for experimentation, that is generating a lot of ideas and selecting the ones according to some selection criteria and seeing what sticks. The early periods of gaming, in the NES days there was lots of crap but lots of new ideas. For instance would you ever see Cobra Triangle today?
Cobra Triangle was made by RARE (yes that RARE, of Killer instinct fame, and other N64 games
The real problem is that developers didn't have a complete handle on WHY and WHAT made their games successful (what worked and what didn't), it took a lot of trial and error for them to figure this out and even STILL TODAY many developers haven't figured it out... I can tell which developers have gotten it and which developers haven't by playing sequels in a franchise, I can always tell when developers don't understand what in their games were fun or not.
"A toddler, on the other hand, literally CAN'T do what they are told in certain instances, because they don't have the same thought process that adults have (which is what this research is trying to show). It's not that they are choosing to ignore their parents, they just don't have the reasoning capability at that age to comprehend complex conditional statements like "When I tell you it is cold outside get a jacket""
I agree completeley with this statement but I also but it also doesn't merely apply to toddlers, adults push their adult expectations on children when it is inappropriate to do so given their developmental level all around, which is the cause of much dysfunction in our society at large, and lots of wounds and rifts within a family.
People really don't understand how clueless they really are in some respects, and I'm glad scientists are finally getting around to exposing the truth of a lot of bad parenting advice.
But I realize that even the best science can't get around the fact that some kids have different nature's, some kids are inherently self destructive and have "problem behaviours" due to their biology or some neurological condition not yet understood (aspergers, and such, comes to mind), which clearly have neurological underpinnings but the data is studies are still being done because a lot of work is still in it's infancy.
Let's also not forget, that people function differently at the neurological level, and when they encounter peolpe that don't function like themselves or seem to be "missing" certain functions, they often don't realize - that the are simply to not process the world or experience it in the same way as what they are used to... and such people are labelled/ostracized/teased/bullied/whatever for that.
"You're pretty stupid. Science is methodological and precise to avoid relying on "common sense" because common sense often is not actually correct."
Not that I don't agree, but lets flesh figure out wwhy this cliche statement holds a grain of truth in the first place.
Common sense may not always be correct, but lets be sensible here - not hitting someone is common sense and you don't need science to tell you that. Now someone might say "well ok, common sense is sometimes correct", the problem is not with "common sense" the problem is with the imprecision of language and the context in which the term "common sense" is dropped in conversation in place of specific arguments or observations that are articulated well and to the point which are completely testable and verifiable,
The problem is that the term common sense is always used within a context that is never specifically defined point by point, if it was then I'm sure science would back up a lot of 'common sense' (which is just shorthand often times for valid evidence and observations of other people through their lives experiences)
"You decide. But at this point in history, there's only one way to create wealth, and you don't do it by not working. Robots may be more efficient at manufacturing some products than human beings, but keep firmly in mind that civilization does not solely revolve around manufacturing trade goods efficiently."
You're ignoring the fact that machines have created an enormous amounts of unnecessary jobs just to keep people employed, the whole point of technological advancement is doing more with less.
Lets not forget the fact that the end goal with engineering is ARTIFICIAL intelligence orders of magnitude beyond human powers of reasoning, we're already getting on the path there with google with their massive amounts of data, most science these days gets better as the result of more computational power to grok enormous data sets and less emphasis on the human being.
Consider that people have designed automated investment trading schemes that outperform human minds because human minds simply cannot think or react fast enough, they are not perfect by any measure but the point being is, we create tools to offload and download work off of ourselves. But the perverse side effect is that it increases misery and increases competition for wealth, those who own control those who don't.
Human minds are slowly being superseded by their own technology, sure there will always be jobs but the fact is they are necessary because people have NO OTHER CHOICE, for most people in a capitalist society its work or face homelessness and starvation.
We are still remarkably primitive and antagonistic in this regard.
The whole 'service sector' economy is a testament to the fact disruptive technologies can tank entire industries and thats where most people who've fallen out of the system end up.
"People have to figure in there somewhere. That's China's biggest problem right now: their people are little better than organic robots."
But you're forgetting we're we'll eventually design robots that can compete with the human brain, and at that point the collision coarse of our current economic model vs the "superfluous" white collar and blue collar people population that "can't compete", we will have to find solutions.
Stockholders of the losing companies won't think so. Competition drives prices down but it also reduces profits, amd and intel got into mad price wars, and AMD hit Nvidia in the chin with the 4870 with DDR5 and a smaller die size, while nvidia is scrambling to move inventory of rather lackluster performing cards when compared against the 4870 and even the previous generations almighty 8800 series.
The 8800 series was nvidia's grand slam and neither the 4870 nor the GT200 are really that great when all games run just fine on the 8800 (or or simply the G92 core).
Intel is reacting out of fear that nvidia is closing in. With GPU's they've reduced the significance of CPU power as the main driver of performance upgrades and therefore can no longer command premium prices.
Intel has been really lazy when it comes to providing for their own platform (thinking in terms what are the killer apps for the PC), IMHO it would be good if Nvidia hits a home run developing x86 with integrated graphics, as well as their own cpu. Nvidia seems to understand the fact that applications like games are important to the platform or else it will lose relevance long term and people will move to consoles. This has one thing I've hated about Microsoft's schizophrenic policy towards the PC, they can't seem to be able to deal effectively with an "open box" like the PC in terms of software sales because of piracy, and hence the Xbox and Xbox 360 .
Larabee better be something special by the time it is released or else Intel will have wasted a lot of time and effort on a part that doesn't compete.
Lastly, I think Intel is clueless that the PC is in desperate need of a revamp in terms of how common upgrades (like video cards, hard drives, etc) are installed, to remove the geek factor. I would love it if people could just plug shit into a slot (along the lines of how we slide flash memory cards into flash slots) and have been thinking about redesigning the PC case and motherboard slots as well to make the openness and upgradability of a PC more user friendly and accessible easier, retard proof designs.
There have been physicists who've gotten wrapped up in the "cult" of mathematics. Stereotypically and anecdotally as a generality perhaps but the 'cult of math' effect is not really limited to any particular discipline, it's more to do with the person and their inclinations and the institutions they are a part of, I've seen great economists, engineers, and intelligent businessmen have similar opinions.
Here's a clip from the visual thinking post which is most pertinent, note where maxwell ignores gibbs below is the quote, and then there's a more fleshed out version below it...
"Evidently, according to Gibbs, the equation of state derived at the begining of his first paper was not as insightful as the graphical method. Interesting. To understand how the thermodynamic relationship of properties can be better understood graphically without the analytic experessions it is necessary to actually read and study Gibbs 1873 publications." ---
After carefully developing various reversible thermodynamic "graphical methods", pp. 310-341, Gibbs concludes:
"In the foregoing discussion, the equations which express the fundamental principles of thermodynamics in an analytical form have been assumed, and the aim has only been to show how the same relations may be expressed geometrically. It would, however, be easy, starting from the first and second laws of thermodynamics as usually enunciated, to arrive at the same results without the aid of analytical formulae, to arrive, for example, at the conception of energy, of entropy, of absolute temperature, in the construction of the diagram without the analytical definitions of these quantities, and to obtain the various properties of the diagram without the analytical expression of the thermodynamic properties which they involve. Such a course would have been better fitted to show the independence and sufficiency of a graphical method, but perhaps less suitable for an examination of the comparative advantages or disadvantages of different graphical methods."
Evidently, according to Gibbs, the equation of state derived at the begining of his first paper was not as insightful as the graphical method. Interesting. To understand how the thermodynamic relationship of properties can be better understood graphically without the analytic experessions it is necessary to actually read and study Gibbs 1873 publications. After reading these two publications James Clerk Maxwell created a "sculptured" surface in 1874 showing the thermodynamic graphical relationship of energy, entropy, and volume, described in detail by Gibbs, but never drawn. Maxwell also graphically reproduced and extended Gibbs' original graphical method by constructing lines of temperature and pressure mapped onto his sculptured surface in figure 26d, pg 207, Theory of Heat, 1904, without using any mathematical relations as recommended by Gibbs. This is quite an endorsement, coming from Maxwell the mathematician. This also demonstrates scientific reproducibility. Maxwell used clay and plaster to make a "sculpture", a graphical model of Gibbs' graphical method. It was 1874, there were no graphical tools. Maxwell sent one of three sculptures to Gibbs at Yale in 1874 which is enclosed in a dusty display case next to an oil drum. Another of Maxwell's sculptures can be viewed in a display case at Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge.
It is interesting to note that the graphical method, originally developed by Gibbs, was done so independent of any graphical tools or models built with these tools. With todays computer technology we have focused on using graphical tools, not developing graphical methods within the scientific/mathematical context understood by the scientist. A brief web summary describes how Gibbs' graphical method is related to a generalized graphical method used to envision total derivatives without reference to graphical tools. Another web site, created by Professor Kenneth Jolls and Dr. Daniel Coy, summarizes Gibbs' graphical method and highlights Dr Coy's Ph.D. dissertation, "Visualizing thermodynamic stability and phase-equilibrium through computer graphics", Iowa State University, 1993. These web sites and Dr. Coy's dissertation exemplifies how others can learn about Gibbs' graphical method and create energy-entropy-volume surfaces as originally described by Gibbs and graphically reproduced by Maxwell.
Although it was Gibbs intention to develop "graphical
Mathematics is often a very cultish to people who revere it and especially on people on slashdot who have never done nor read any serious science in the matter.
You can start by reading the work of other people in the field, I would suggest Molecule to metaphor a neural theory of language as a starting point since it's very well written, it's going to take more then a tiny slashdot post to really understand why neural computation is non-symbolic, you have to look at the evidence across many fields.
Also consider why is it that so many brilliant people visually model things and then derive and seek to mathematize from the visual-geometric images/structures which they are seeing? (Einstein comes to mind initially, but also feynmann) see: Visual thinking
I also speak from personal experience from doing my own work in mathematical thinking, I am primarily a visual thinker, and people are often struck when I point out how you can mathematically derive something from merely looking at something i.e. math is an alphabet to systematize structure.
I also suggest you look into knowledge representation, this will probably give you the most insight into why neural computation is non-symbolic, but perhaps Daniel tammet would be more convincing -
Daniel tammet (multi modal ability - numbers as shapes, he derives numbers from literal visual imagery - geometric shapes) i.e. the structures come before the symbols, and are connected to the way he represents and frames knowledge.
Unfortunately mathematics has a cult like tendency to draw people in, in the real world numbers don't mean anything without someone vetting the numbers. I think only good scientists/engineers can really understand the limitations of mathematics, there seems to be a divide between those who deify mathematics and those who see it as one of a group of tools we use to understand the universe.
"My pet theory is what we call our mind is a self referencing MATHEMATICAL MODEL of the universe that emerges from the cellular colonies we refer to as ourselves."
Except that neural computation is inherently non symbolic, this is your fallacy, you have no understanding of neurology.
Look the article was talking about being in the business of making games, if you're making indie game development your business, and you expect to be successful just because you think your game is the greatest thing since sliced bread, I got a bridge I want to sell you.
I have nothing against indies or indie games, my post was for those developers who expect to make significant amounts of money from what they do and those who still have no common sense what-so-ever.
So what you said was not my "post in a nutshell", it's to tell indies if they plan on making a living off of indie development - that is a business out of making games, they have to realize what kind of competition they are up against and not to be bitter about it.
Sometimes I wonder if some developers (not all, you know who you are) live in an alternate world, they often seem to have no common sense.
When a developer invests a lot of time in a project, they are going to have a myopic view of their work and expectations of why they deserve to be paid, etc, etc.
Any business is about risk management, you have to realize you are not owed anything, business's fail. When 3Dfx went under because of a host of bad decisions and Nvidia ran in and scooped up their IP at the fire sale, did you think they were blaming anyone but themselves?
If you don't manage your risks and blow a tonne of money developing a game when you have not adequately assessed the risks, and really asked yourself if you're willing to lose it all, who's fault is that?
Economies of scale are the major issue in game development that indies need to take into consideration to temper their 'furor' at piracy or whatever else they think causes their 'lack of success', lets face it, you should be doing proper market research and targetting your markets appropriately, like Stardock did with Sins of a solar empire (500K+ units sold, for what is mostly a very "indie" game).
Make stuff a paying populace of people want and they will buy it. Many oldschool PC game developers got trapped in listening to internet fans when developing games (descent 3 and Planescape torment come to mind) and when they sold poorly some team members blamed the fans for not buying their product that they thought was "so awesome", lets face it here. This was a painful lesson in lack of market research for those PC developers who moved onto other games with wider appeal.
To develop a game up to "AAA" expectations one needs a hell of a lot of development talent and money in terms of art, programming and everyone else on the team. Not only that, real game development talent is scarce. Then add in the fact that games depreciate in value awful fast because they are competing against games both old and new, as well as piracy, and also because most games don't have any kind of solid replayability where you keep coming back to it.
To be honest it's a bloody miracle anyone pays for software at all, since it isn't a scarce and it is easily duplicated. Developers need to learn to live in reality and develop games people want to buy, or move to consoles to publish their crapware, most games aren't anything special now-a-days if you've been gaming since the NES or pre-NES era.
The problem with indie development is that we've moved past the era where expectations were lower in some respects, I could see indie's thriving in the time before 3D acceeleration, in fact many "indie" games were shareware lets not forget.
Doom and duke nukem were both SHAREWARE if anyone old enough here remembers. I first came into contact with doom through BBS's in 'yeee old days' and there was piracy back then through BBS's, lets not say that piracy has not been there all along. The "warez scene" started out on BBS's. Many popular games shareware games (like doom, doom 2, duke nukem) were pirated.
Developers should focus on making games that make money, and either fund their personal pet projects on their own dime and stop complaining when no body but them and a small cultish group of people likes it.
This is exactly why certain genre's died out on the PC and console, certain developers didn't know where to take a genre or the market for that kind of game was shrinking and they ended up dying.
Slashdot Mirror
Truth be told it's all bullshit. Many libraries never have the books you need, everytime I've needed a book I've had to send wait while using intralibrary loans, quite frankly I'm glad google is sucking back the worlds knowledge. In the digital age, I should be able to search a book, cut and paste text from a book, etc. You can't do that very easy with traditional deadtree books. They both have a place, but digitizing the worlds books can only be a boon for civilization as a whole. This is where knowledge > profits IMHO.
... I'd really like it of gamers/customers had the ability to take back rights of abandonware or games and
properties that are just being sat on, and also have their rights expanded as investors/co-owners in some capacity because right now the indivduals rights are being abused willy nilly.
I would have loved to see what would have happened to the fan made chrono trigger resurrection if Square had not threatened them:
http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/
Someone said earlier: "Programmers are neither abstractly creative nor socially comfortable by default"
I really have qualms with this. Software is not like other discplines. The real fact of the matter is most programmers are poor in math and computer science AND many programmers didn't have early hardware to tinker with.
Andre lamothe was so frustrated by coders lack of understanding of hardware, math and algorithms he started his own site.
http://www.xgamestation.com/index.php
IMHO I would have killed for a site like this when I was younger, in the 'pre-internet' days when I was still in highschool. Personally our real problem is that kids are not guided where they need to be and everyone thinks they 'know' what a software engineer needs to know when they don't.
It also doesn't help that many technically inclined kids are ostracized because they happen to be interested in sciency or electronicy things. Not to mention some coders surely need some social skills classes as well as weight loss classes (to boost their social skills confidence).
Personally if I were running a business I would pay bonus's to coders that went to toastmasters, etc and improved their interpersonal communication skills. Businesses just have to start demanding and REWARDING this from their workforce if they want to see it. The problem is business's treat coders/programmers like unskilled laborers to be used and abused for the lowest wages possible. Is it any wonder that no one really wants to improve given the sorry situation in software development?
The best coders I've ever met were tinkerers. They sat there and tinkered with shit for hours plugging away exploring their curiousity. They had an overwhelming desire to master their discipline, and many were also mathematically inclined.
Electronics, math and coding have a lot in common, there are deep relationships between electronics, coding and math. The problem is you will not find most or all the skills to run a business well monolithically in one person, since the education system is set up so poorly.
Pfft... my point is the linux community isn't doing anything to help companies create a unified driver that works on all systems. While I may be off with the details, the fact that no one likes maintaining codebases for different platforms is spot on.
That's the point I made which still stands. Inter-operability with reduced hardware developer burden in terms of drivers, etc, is critical.
The 275 is a 285 with rops disabled, that's the only difference, or Core 216 with ROPS enabled. But they are the same chip the GT200. If you look at the specs it's obvious they based the 275 around the GTX 260 reference design PCB based on the Core 216/GTX 260.
Either way I was totally underwhelmed by both cards in terms of performance, I'm not sure why everyone is getting their panties in a bunch. Anyone owning 8800 GTS / GTX from the last gen still can play every game on the market.
For anyone who owns and 8800 GTS / GTX it's best to wait for the next generation rather then waste $ on this one, when the 4870 and GT200 first came out, it was obvious that both parts were underwhelming performers.
They're attempting to force "heavy users" to pony up for bandwidth that already exists in abundance in their network.
My own ISP started bandwidth capping in the last year and a half and cut me down to 60GB without notice and I was pissed. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if the *IAA's of the world are influencing these decisions.
"Linux has plenty of critics. Developers are critical of their own code."
I'm sorry but what linux needs is a bunch of windows power users and regular people trying to use the computer and criticizing it. The real problem is that if you had to sell linux to the masses, you'd have to please your customers.
I would venture to say that linux has tendency towards developer monoculture - i.e. you can tell it's made by devleopers/engineering types in that not enough processes are automated or self explantory, and often times there is peculiar behaviour when compared to mass market OS like windows. Next is that I'd give linux GUI's a makeover in terms of artistic layout and design. The one thing windows get's right is that it makes the environment appealing to users.
The biggest hurdle though IMHO is that there needs to be ONE driver/driver model for multiple OS's (win, linux, etc) so a driver team only has to write the damn driver once. Since the real problem is the enormous upkeep costs in terms of a companies developer time to develop drivers and deal with issues in an environment that is a moving target (i.e. being updated, etc)
That's the real problem with linux in that the linux developers don't really get that choices for key areas are often a bad thing and this causes segmentation for the average user and lack of hardware support.
Vista had enough issues with drivers when they updated the OS, you'd think the linux people would really want to be able to take an XP/vista driver and make it work for linux, find some way to plug emulate a win9x environment or wrap it so you could just plug it in and have the hardware friggin work.
"The Wii market isn't actually as big as it appears. In reality, it's quite possibly smaller than the 360 and PS3 markets."
I have qualms with this. The real reason the Wii isn't doing as well as the PS3 and Xbox in terms of games sales is... Developers and publishers were expecting the Gamecube #2 in terms of success and installed base and so focused all their resources towards Xbox 360 and PS3.
Game developers started planning and developing their games for PS3 and Xbox years in advance and wrote off the Wii as "Gamecube 2", do we not all remember the joke about how the Wii is just two gamecubes stuck together with duct-tape?
Developers balked at the lack of power for the GC and they were counting on the PS3 to be #1 again with Xbox 360 being #2. So they spent all their development effort towards them. Once the Wii took off developers and publishers were blindsided, and the simple fact is : They didn't commit resources to the platform years in advance.
Lets not forget that developing games requires years of development, and no one in the developer and publisher community was planning on the Wii being this successful in terms of hardware sales and installed base. The did the math and it didn't add up (then).
That's the REAL problem. I'd imagine most gamers have two console's today : PS3 + Wii or Xbox 360+ Wii, and the hardcore with all 3.
... their markets.
Sometimes I have to wonder who is running the show at these companies, Soul calibur 2 for the gamecube for instance sold over ~700K copies, and yet when soul calibur 3 arrived it never arrived on the cube despite the previous one almost breaking a million, and SC2 was cross platform and it certainly did break more then a million in sales, yet they stiffed over 700K fans on the GC with sequels.
This kind of bullshit is why game companies are where they are, there are paying audiences for their games, but then some clueless higher up decides "meh not worth it". The truth is the people running these businesses are fucking clueless about gaming, they've lost touch with the ir customers, and think it's all about making it more like the movies, which is just bullshit.
I'm not the only tired of the endless FMV in place of gameplay (Metal gear solid 4, I'm looking at you!)
You're not making a movie, you're making a game. Many development houses don't seem to get this. Sure gaming has a lot to learn from techniques from the movie industry, but it is NOT the movie industry, a couple of the games that got this right:
God of war and it's sequel, and Call of duty 4 Modern warfare, both excellent games who's developers seem to understand - don't make your game into a movie, take the best elements of movies and adapt them for the game
... I think that's the real issue people can't deal with. Nature doesn't care who or what you are attracted to, you just are.
The fact that is most men and women are attracted to the what they are attracted to and good looks regardless of age.
We've probably all seen this time and time again, when a beautiful little girl who we all know is going to grow up to be a looker enters the room and EVERYONE (men and women) damn well treats her sweeter then everyone else as well as getting a lot of the attention.
Truth be told, a lot of men and women (and kids nearing puberty, etc) are going to experiment in their imagination things that are NC17 rated or worse, and this has been going on since the beginning of time, if we dumped out all the dirty sexual thoughts people thought, I'd bet 99% of the world would be convicted of something they public ally decry.
Humans are still wild animals, despite their big brains, people just don't want to accept it.
This all comes down to the american capitalist, hyper propertarian view of copyright which other countries are free to reject. This american centrism discussion of IP is what people are railing against.
If we had more people like John carmack in the world, (giving away his sourcecode) and letting games fall into what is practically public domain, IP wouldn't be such a problem.
We have too many idiots who want to use IP to privately tax creativity and innovation to death. We have orphan works that people can't touch because of IP, when's the last time anything entered public domain?
Truth be told the sheeple are feeding the King georges of corporate world, private profit can be abused and turned into a PRIVATE tax of an unelected body of people and framed as "trade", when it's nothing but another form of totalitarianism and corporate protectionism, or simply - rule by price.
Next is the fact that corporations are trying to stop people from owning anything, and the pirate bay is a good reaction against that despite what it's users intentions are. I'm glad they exist as a counterweight to all corporate bullshit that keeps getting passed because their are not enough intelligent people in the world to stop the army of lawyers and deep pockets in washington and other governments of the world who are bought and paid for by these shills.
"(Btw, I mostly liked your post, but comments about "not sure you're old enough or aware enough" do make you sound a bit petulent.)"
It wasn't meant as a jab or petulence, I couldn't gauge by your post whether you were an "oldbie" or a "newbie" releatively speaking. I agree with most of what you said as well.
"The problem is that, despite what people like to think, experimentation and innovation don't often make for very good games."
I disagree, peter has had hit games (through his experimentation) out of the gate (populous comes to mind, as well as syndicate, etc), of which which were totally original projects - and hit the ground running.
Sometimes it's just that the first games that experiment with new ideas usually don't get everything right and some games (black and white as you mentioned) ran into problems where the developer (peter) was clueless himself in where the fun in his creative vision was, he has said so himself by the way in more recent interviews that can be found by googling around.
Peter has some serious street cred, I'm not sure you're old enough (or aware enough) of all the games Peter has been involved in - us older gamers know Bullfrog productions (list of games @ link below)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullfrog_Productions
Game developers have been in the process of learning to make better video games over the years, the problem was - they didn't have a process for finding the fun in games, that is now becoming a lot more of a scientifically based process of hypothesis - testing and experimentation before a game is released.
Even developers who take what already works, STILL have problems getting it right. Supreme commander comes to mind, where Chris taylor was disappointed they fell back on tanks and artillery and making the races mostly the same, when he wanted race diversity.
No game would have ever been made if it wasn't for experimentation, that is generating a lot of ideas and selecting the ones according to some selection criteria and seeing what sticks. The early periods of gaming, in the NES days there was lots of crap but lots of new ideas. For instance would you ever see Cobra Triangle today?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_Triangle
Cobra Triangle was made by RARE (yes that RARE, of Killer instinct fame, and other N64 games
The real problem is that developers didn't have a complete handle on WHY and WHAT made their games successful (what worked and what didn't), it took a lot of trial and error for them to figure this out and even STILL TODAY many developers haven't figured it out... I can tell which developers have gotten it and which developers haven't by playing sequels in a franchise, I can always tell when developers don't understand what in their games were fun or not.
"A toddler, on the other hand, literally CAN'T do what they are told in certain instances, because they don't have the same thought process that adults have (which is what this research is trying to show). It's not that they are choosing to ignore their parents, they just don't have the reasoning capability at that age to comprehend complex conditional statements like "When I tell you it is cold outside get a jacket""
I agree completeley with this statement but I also but it also doesn't merely apply to toddlers, adults push their adult expectations on children when it is inappropriate to do so given their developmental level all around, which is the cause of much dysfunction in our society at large, and lots of wounds and rifts within a family.
People really don't understand how clueless they really are in some respects, and I'm glad scientists are finally getting around to exposing the truth of a lot of bad parenting advice.
But I realize that even the best science can't get around the fact that some kids have different nature's, some kids are inherently self destructive and have "problem behaviours" due to their biology or some neurological condition not yet understood (aspergers, and such, comes to mind), which clearly have neurological underpinnings but the data is studies are still being done because a lot of work is still in it's infancy.
Let's also not forget, that people function differently at the neurological level, and when they encounter peolpe that don't function like themselves or seem to be "missing" certain functions, they often don't realize - that the are simply to not process the world or experience it in the same way as what they are used to... and such people are labelled/ostracized/teased/bullied/whatever for that.
"You're pretty stupid. Science is methodological and precise to avoid relying on "common sense" because common sense often is not actually correct."
Not that I don't agree, but lets flesh figure out wwhy this cliche statement holds a grain of truth in the first place.
Common sense may not always be correct, but lets be sensible here - not hitting someone is common sense and you don't need science to tell you that. Now someone might say "well ok, common sense is sometimes correct", the problem is not with "common sense" the problem is with the imprecision of language and the context in which the term "common sense" is dropped in conversation in place of specific arguments or observations that are articulated well and to the point which are completely testable and verifiable,
The problem is that the term common sense is always used within a context that is never specifically defined point by point, if it was then I'm sure science would back up a lot of 'common sense' (which is just shorthand often times for valid evidence and observations of other people through their lives experiences)
"You decide. But at this point in history, there's only one way to create wealth, and you don't do it by not working. Robots may be more efficient at manufacturing some products than human beings, but keep firmly in mind that civilization does not solely revolve around manufacturing trade goods efficiently."
You're ignoring the fact that machines have created an enormous amounts of unnecessary jobs just to keep people employed, the whole point of technological advancement is doing more with less.
Lets not forget the fact that the end goal with engineering is ARTIFICIAL intelligence orders of magnitude beyond human powers of reasoning, we're already getting on the path there with google with their massive amounts of data, most science these days gets better as the result of more computational power to grok enormous data sets and less emphasis on the human being.
Consider that people have designed automated investment trading schemes that outperform human minds because human minds simply cannot think or react fast enough, they are not perfect by any measure but the point being is, we create tools to offload and download work off of ourselves. But the perverse side effect is that it increases misery and increases competition for wealth, those who own control those who don't.
Human minds are slowly being superseded by their own technology, sure there will always be jobs but the fact is they are necessary because people have NO OTHER CHOICE, for most people in a capitalist society its work or face homelessness and starvation.
We are still remarkably primitive and antagonistic in this regard.
The whole 'service sector' economy is a testament to the fact disruptive technologies can tank entire industries and thats where most people who've fallen out of the system end up.
"People have to figure in there somewhere. That's China's biggest problem right now: their people are little better than organic robots."
But you're forgetting we're we'll eventually design robots that can compete with the human brain, and at that point the collision coarse of our current economic model vs the "superfluous" white collar and blue collar people population that "can't compete", we will have to find solutions.
Stockholders of the losing companies won't think so. Competition drives prices down but it also reduces profits, amd and intel got into mad price wars, and AMD hit Nvidia in the chin with the 4870 with DDR5 and a smaller die size, while nvidia is scrambling to move inventory of rather lackluster performing cards when compared against the 4870 and even the previous generations almighty 8800 series.
The 8800 series was nvidia's grand slam and neither the 4870 nor the GT200 are really that great when all games run just fine on the 8800 (or or simply the G92 core).
Intel is reacting out of fear that nvidia is closing in. With GPU's they've reduced the significance of CPU power as the main driver of performance upgrades and therefore can no longer command premium prices.
Intel has been really lazy when it comes to providing for their own platform (thinking in terms what are the killer apps for the PC), IMHO it would be good if Nvidia hits a home run developing x86 with integrated graphics, as well as their own cpu. Nvidia seems to understand the fact that applications like games are important to the platform or else it will lose relevance long term and people will move to consoles. This has one thing I've hated about Microsoft's schizophrenic policy towards the PC, they can't seem to be able to deal effectively with an "open box" like the PC in terms of software sales because of piracy, and hence the Xbox and Xbox 360 .
Larabee better be something special by the time it is released or else Intel will have wasted a lot of time and effort on a part that doesn't compete.
Lastly, I think Intel is clueless that the PC is in desperate need of a revamp in terms of how common upgrades (like video cards, hard drives, etc) are installed, to remove the geek factor. I would love it if people could just plug shit into a slot (along the lines of how we slide flash memory cards into flash slots) and have been thinking about redesigning the PC case and motherboard slots as well to make the openness and upgradability of a PC more user friendly and accessible easier, retard proof designs.
Some of us do know something about the subject and far more because we keep up in other sciences and science has a lot to say about math.
http://www.amazon.com/Where-Mathematics-Comes-Embodied-Brings/dp/0465037712/
There have been physicists who've gotten wrapped up in the "cult" of mathematics. Stereotypically and anecdotally as a generality perhaps but the 'cult of math' effect is not really limited to any particular discipline, it's more to do with the person and their inclinations and the institutions they are a part of, I've seen great economists, engineers, and intelligent businessmen have similar opinions.
It all comes down to what you've been exposed to.
Here's a clip from the visual thinking post which is most pertinent, note where maxwell ignores gibbs below is the quote, and then there's a more fleshed out version below it ...
"Evidently, according to Gibbs, the equation of state derived at the begining of his first paper was not as insightful as the graphical method. Interesting. To understand how the thermodynamic relationship of properties can be better understood graphically without the analytic experessions it is necessary to actually read and study Gibbs 1873 publications."
---
After carefully developing various reversible thermodynamic "graphical methods", pp. 310-341, Gibbs concludes:
"In the foregoing discussion, the equations which express the fundamental principles of thermodynamics in an analytical form have been assumed, and the aim has only been to show how the same relations may be expressed geometrically. It would, however, be easy, starting from the first and second laws of thermodynamics as usually enunciated, to arrive at the same results without the aid of analytical formulae, to arrive, for example, at the conception of energy, of entropy, of absolute temperature, in the construction of the diagram without the analytical definitions of these quantities, and to obtain the various properties of the diagram without the analytical expression of the thermodynamic properties which they involve. Such a course would have been better fitted to show the independence and sufficiency of a graphical method, but perhaps less suitable for an examination of the comparative advantages or disadvantages of different graphical methods."
Evidently, according to Gibbs, the equation of state derived at the begining of his first paper was not as insightful as the graphical method. Interesting. To understand how the thermodynamic relationship of properties can be better understood graphically without the analytic experessions it is necessary to actually read and study Gibbs 1873 publications. After reading these two publications James Clerk Maxwell created a "sculptured" surface in 1874 showing the thermodynamic graphical relationship of energy, entropy, and volume, described in detail by Gibbs, but never drawn. Maxwell also graphically reproduced and extended Gibbs' original graphical method by constructing lines of temperature and pressure mapped onto his sculptured surface in figure 26d, pg 207, Theory of Heat, 1904, without using any mathematical relations as recommended by Gibbs. This is quite an endorsement, coming from Maxwell the mathematician. This also demonstrates scientific reproducibility. Maxwell used clay and plaster to make a "sculpture", a graphical model of Gibbs' graphical method. It was 1874, there were no graphical tools. Maxwell sent one of three sculptures to Gibbs at Yale in 1874 which is enclosed in a dusty display case next to an oil drum. Another of Maxwell's sculptures can be viewed in a display case at Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge.
It is interesting to note that the graphical method, originally developed by Gibbs, was done so independent of any graphical tools or models built with these tools. With todays computer technology we have focused on using graphical tools, not developing graphical methods within the scientific/mathematical context understood by the scientist. A brief web summary describes how Gibbs' graphical method is related to a generalized graphical method used to envision total derivatives without reference to graphical tools. Another web site, created by Professor Kenneth Jolls and Dr. Daniel Coy, summarizes Gibbs' graphical method and highlights Dr Coy's Ph.D. dissertation, "Visualizing thermodynamic stability and phase-equilibrium through computer graphics", Iowa State University, 1993. These web sites and Dr. Coy's dissertation exemplifies how others can learn about Gibbs' graphical method and create energy-entropy-volume surfaces as originally described by Gibbs and graphically reproduced by Maxwell.
Although it was Gibbs intention to develop "graphical
Mathematics is often a very cultish to people who revere it and especially on people on slashdot who have never done nor read any serious science in the matter.
You can start by reading the work of other people in the field, I would suggest Molecule to metaphor a neural theory of language as a starting point since it's very well written, it's going to take more then a tiny slashdot post to really understand why neural computation is non-symbolic, you have to look at the evidence across many fields.
Also consider why is it that so many brilliant people visually model things and then derive and seek to mathematize from the visual-geometric images/structures which they are seeing? (Einstein comes to mind initially, but also feynmann) see: Visual thinking
http://www.sv.vt.edu/classes/ESM4714/Gen_Prin/vizthink.html
I also speak from personal experience from doing my own work in mathematical thinking, I am primarily a visual thinker, and people are often struck when I point out how you can mathematically derive something from merely looking at something i.e. math is an alphabet to systematize structure.
I also suggest you look into knowledge representation, this will probably give you the most insight into why neural computation is non-symbolic, but perhaps Daniel tammet would be more convincing -
Daniel tammet (multi modal ability - numbers as shapes, he derives numbers from literal visual imagery - geometric shapes) i.e. the structures come before the symbols, and are connected to the way he represents and frames knowledge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbASOcqc1Ss
Book - Author Jerald Feldman MIT press
http://www.amazon.com/Molecule-Metaphor-Neural-Language-Bradford/dp/0262562359/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237566064&sr=8-1
Unfortunately mathematics has a cult like tendency to draw people in, in the real world numbers don't mean anything without someone vetting the numbers. I think only good scientists/engineers can really understand the limitations of mathematics, there seems to be a divide between those who deify mathematics and those who see it as one of a group of tools we use to understand the universe.
"My pet theory is what we call our mind is a self referencing MATHEMATICAL MODEL of the universe that emerges from the cellular colonies we refer to as ourselves."
Except that neural computation is inherently non symbolic, this is your fallacy, you have no understanding of neurology.
Look the article was talking about being in the business of making games, if you're making indie game development your business, and you expect to be successful just because you think your game is the greatest thing since sliced bread, I got a bridge I want to sell you.
I have nothing against indies or indie games, my post was for those developers who expect to make significant amounts of money from what they do and those who still have no common sense what-so-ever.
So what you said was not my "post in a nutshell", it's to tell indies if they plan on making a living off of indie development - that is a business out of making games, they have to realize what kind of competition they are up against and not to be bitter about it.
Sometimes I wonder if some developers (not all, you know who you are) live in an alternate world, they often seem to have no common sense.
When a developer invests a lot of time in a project, they are going to have a myopic view of their work and expectations of why they deserve to be paid, etc, etc.
Any business is about risk management, you have to realize you are not owed anything, business's fail. When 3Dfx went under because of a host of bad decisions and Nvidia ran in and scooped up their IP at the fire sale, did you think they were blaming anyone but themselves?
If you don't manage your risks and blow a tonne of money developing a game when you have not adequately assessed the risks, and really asked yourself if you're willing to lose it all, who's fault is that?
Economies of scale are the major issue in game development that indies need to take into consideration to temper their 'furor' at piracy or whatever else they think causes their 'lack of success', lets face it, you should be doing proper market research and targetting your markets appropriately, like Stardock did with Sins of a solar empire (500K+ units sold, for what is mostly a very "indie" game).
Make stuff a paying populace of people want and they will buy it. Many oldschool PC game developers got trapped in listening to internet fans when developing games (descent 3 and Planescape torment come to mind) and when they sold poorly some team members blamed the fans for not buying their product that they thought was "so awesome", lets face it here. This was a painful lesson in lack of market research for those PC developers who moved onto other games with wider appeal.
To develop a game up to "AAA" expectations one needs a hell of a lot of development talent and money in terms of art, programming and everyone else on the team. Not only that, real game development talent is scarce. Then add in the fact that games depreciate in value awful fast because they are competing against games both old and new, as well as piracy, and also because most games don't have any kind of solid replayability where you keep coming back to it.
To be honest it's a bloody miracle anyone pays for software at all, since it isn't a scarce and it is easily duplicated. Developers need to learn to live in reality and develop games people want to buy, or move to consoles to publish their crapware, most games aren't anything special now-a-days if you've been gaming since the NES or pre-NES era.
The problem with indie development is that we've moved past the era where expectations were lower in some respects, I could see indie's thriving in the time before 3D acceeleration, in fact many "indie" games were shareware lets not forget.
Doom and duke nukem were both SHAREWARE if anyone old enough here remembers. I first came into contact with doom through BBS's in 'yeee old days' and there was piracy back then through BBS's, lets not say that piracy has not been there all along. The "warez scene" started out on BBS's. Many popular games shareware games (like doom, doom 2, duke nukem) were pirated.
Developers should focus on making games that make money, and either fund their personal pet projects on their own dime and stop complaining when no body but them and a small cultish group of people likes it.
This is exactly why certain genre's died out on the PC and console, certain developers didn't know where to take a genre or the market for that kind of game was shrinking and they ended up dying.