You are making the incorrect assumption that every "gamer" owns the console they play on. It is possible that hardcore gamer A lives in the same house as non-hardcore gamer B...
I was simply making my assumptions based off the numbers.
For our situation the set of all non-gamers has 3 subsets:
1)The set of non-gamers who do not have a "gamer" in the house at all
2)The set of non-gamers who have a "gamer" in the house, but no Xbox360 (PS2, GameCube, PC, etc...)
3)The set of non-gamers who have a "gamer" in the house and an Xbox360.
The assumption I was making was that subsets 1 and 2 would constitute the bulk of the set of all non-gamers.
In fact, I'd consider non-hardcore to be more about targetting casual gamers rather than getting the 6-year-old crowd. In that respect, the 360 is doing an awesome job with Xbox Live Arcade. Maybe the mainstream titles don't appeal to non-hardcore gamers...
The XBox live arcade is great, and it does have a lot of games non-hardcore gamers would love, but without a mainstream title to convince them to buy the system in the first place, it won't matter what's on the live arcade.
...but your non-hardcore gamers aren't nearly as likely to spend $60 on a game anyway. They'll spend the same amount of money on $5-10 casual games, though, which is where XBLA comes in.
If they aren't likely to spend $60 on a game then they aren't likely to spend $400 to get a system that they can then use to download a few $5-10 games from the arcade to play.
Genesis 1:27 God created man in his own image.... so that would imply that god is an omniprsent monkey. Zealots prefer to worship the image of an old guy with a white beard and hair, they're not so keen on worshipping Koko the signing gorilla.
But evolution didn't start with monkies... perhaps God is more like a giant single celled organism, or a pool of amino acids?
The reason why is simple...it takes a serious amount of time to amass the gold that those guys do. If you cut out that time by paying a $50 or so, then thats a good month or two of subscription fees.
But how many accounts do the gold farmers have, at $15/month each. If the market for their gold continues those accounts will stay with the game for years to come, while the people who buy the gold may quit a month or two earlier than they originally might have.
I think he's saying that the major parties suck and they like to make you think that everyone sucks so you keep ignoring the minor parties that may actually be competent.
Or from what I have heard from them, insane may be a more accurate description.
See it's working... that's exactly what the two main powers want you to think.
Nintendo's the one producing the less technologically advanced solution.
Your statement is true if the only thing you're considering is graphical and processing power.
If you consider other factors, the controller (i.e. User-interface) then Sony and MS have done nothing at all. They just took the exact same controller they already had and slightly changed the shape to fit the average hand better.
Personally I consider a motion-sensitive, totally redesigned controller to be pretty "technologically advanced". If they do it right and get this thing working in an intuitive, user-friendly way I believe it could redefine how we play games, expand the gaming market to previously untapped sources, and could possibly usher in a whole new genre of games that weren't possible when all the control was done through sticks and buttons.
On the other hand, if they screw this controller up and the motion sensing hardware has too many glitches Nintendo will have nothing else to fall back on. Although their online game download service sounds pretty tempting for those of us who grew up on Nintendo, SNES, etc... I would love to play Kid Icarus, Bionic Commando, and all those old classics on a console again. (Yes I am aware of MAME, it just isn't the same)
I say we take this a step further:
1) Go home and find a large cardboard box and tape it shut.
2) Now propose that the box both contains a quantum computer and does not contain a quantum computer.
3) Further propose that the (possible) quantum computer is both running and is not running.
Now we should be able to "ask" the "Magic Box" anything and get an answer back.
I think these monetary incentives to innovate are great. Nothing like a little competition to get people thinking creatively and working hard to realize their dreams. It has done wonders for the autonomous vehicle and commercial space shuttle fields, hopefully that will extend to all these other proposed areas.
One other piece of "future tech" I am hoping it will pay off in is the development of the first space elevator. Another organization has set up an X-Prize style competition, one every year until 2010 when I suppose they're hoping to have something viable. Probably a little overly optimistic, but competition brings out the best in people and I think it's great they are harnessing that power for good.
Go check it out: http://www.elevator2010.org/site/index.html They held their first competition last year. You can check out the results and see the pictures in the "Photo Gallery". Hooray for progress!
Yikes, I've never even heard of cleaver microbes. But if they were able to make it into the super sterile room they no doubt kept the impactor in, and managed to survive the trip into space and the subsequent collision at high speed into a comet then we're all in serious trouble.
Everyone should take this opportunity to lock up their nano-vegetables for safe keeping, perhaps in a Buckyball or a small cage made of Carbon Nano-tubes.
...people are actually looking for solid, easy to get into, quick to play, fun, games instead of expensive eye-candy and flash with no substance that offer complex controls, forced long investments of time, and no real reward? I daresay it does.
That sounds like exactly the direction Nintendo is going with the Revolution (and the DS). Let's just hope they get the controller right.
I changed the moderation to 4 and read through all the comments. I saw all kinds of things about people using mental hashes, combining parts of words from things on their desks, and several very arcane sounding methods of generating new passwords. But I didn't see much about passphrases.
It's always been my understanding that this is probably the best option, assuming the system will allow 25+ characters for passwords, which, sadly, many don't.
The passphrase "try to crack this password fools", even without any extended characters, would just take too long to try to crack through conventional means. Add in some puncuation and capital letters and it becomes even more difficult to crack. And it is something I can easily remember, moreso than a random password like "E4#b.?8Y". So is there a good reason, aside from many sites only allowing 16 or fewer characters for passwords, not to use passphrases?
Shouldn't evolution have, by the process of natural selection,distilled life to its simplest formsuited for survival
It would have, except those lifeforms live in a closed environment.
All those simple lifeforms, that wanted to survive, were competing with each other for limited resources. If one lifeform gets a mutation or ability (Thought, planning, tool-use, etc...) that gives it an advantage over the others, then it gets more resources and is more successful.
It is this constant oneupsmanship over millions and millions of years that results in the insanely complex creatures we have roaming all over this planet.
The second story in time has already interfered... otherwise the grandparent could not have made a comment about there being a second story, and we would not have this thread going that discusses the future existence of an instance of the first story.
Or something like that...
Wyrd-One
They also have those flashlights that work by shaking them.
I imagine it might make for a slightly larger cell phone, and I don't know how long the charge lasts... (the flashlight above says if you shake it for 30 seconds you get 5 minutes of light, so that might make for a long shake if you're planning on talking for very long) but this could be another option for those that are used to rapidly moving their arm up and down.
If you're interested in this story, you should read the book Blondie24.
It's been awhile since I read it, so I apologize for any inaccuracies in my recollection.
The book is about a couple of guys who set out to make a checkers playing program. Only, they didn't just hard code in the rules for checkers, they gave it as little actual checkers information as they could. Then they had it watch, and learn, and play, and watch, and learn, and play... eventually the program started catching on and became a fairly adept checkers player. The program learned to recognize certain patterns and board positions on its own, and learned to weight certain positions and moves based off what it "observed". After doing that enough it had compiled its own ruleset for playing checkers.
I thought that was an excellent way to go about making an AI for a game. I'm a big believer in the bottom up approach, and this book demonstrates that approach wonderfully.
It's certainly not as fast as just hard-coding the rules, or giving it a table of end-game moves, (which it sucked at for awhile) but it is a very innovative, and interesting, (to me) approach.
Wyrd One
Re:I guess I'll have to read the book to be sure,
on
Emergence
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· Score: 1
It is indeed. I read GEB many years ago. The chapters on emergence (10, 11, and 12 mostly) really fascinated me. Shortly after finishing GEB I saw this book, Emergence, and ordered it, hoping to expand my knowledge on the subject.
Emergence was good... but to tell you the truth, I found the 3 chapters in GEB to be much more enlightening. I would recommend those 3 chapters in GEB over the book Emergence any day. Especially the "Prelude..." and "..Ant Fugue" discussions before and after chapter 10.
"The proposed Hubble robotic servicing mission involves a level of complexity, sophistication, and technology maturity that requires significant development, integration, and demonstration to reach flight readiness"
They use this as a negative point in the article, but I say "Good, let's push these guys". These are smart guys and necessity is the mother of invention and the father of ingenuity. If we don't press their minds with "...a level of complexity... that requires significant development" then their potentials won't be realized.
These are some of the best problem solving minds out there... let's give them some tough, but extremely practical, things to figure out. If they pull this off I would think there are a myriad of uses for a robotic repair platform with two arms; Shuttles, satellites, Mir, submarine-type vehicles, etc... and someday, the space elevator.
Wyrd-One
Re:open-source vs. suitability to task
on
Learning PHP 5
·
· Score: 1
How on Earth could a closed vendor compete with that? The answer: they can't.
The one area where a vendor can outmatch an open source option is support... and having someone else to blame.
When your email system goes down, and your biggest customer calls and wants it back up, now, you've got no one to blame with open source except yourself. I've found that sometimes the customer will calm down a bit if you tell them you've got an open ticket with level 2 support at Company X.
Then, when it takes two days to get them back up and running, and they've lost thousands of dollars of business, you can just give them the number for Company X and let the customer chew them out, instead of you.
I think "Black and White" was a learning experience for the Lionhead crew. It was fun in an open ended sort of way, but they got some of the parts wrong, and some of those parts made the game more frustrating than fun.
"If you look after your people's basic needs, they will manage themselves. You are no longer an errand boy to your people - you are a powerful God. Now you easily have the time to affect your people's lives as a nation, not worry about where their next meal comes from. Though, if you want to mess around in the detail, helping farmers, you are still able to."
"Unlike B&W1, the whole world exists all the time, so if you have been to one land you can revisit it at any time and play God. Your people may have progressed since you last visited them though..."
"Some of the key features discussed in the game are about waging massive wars, sieges and battles, discovering and using new 'Epic Miracles'... There is research and players can create new forms of weaponry, from swords to bows to siege machines. Build and design unique defensive gates and walls. Control and marshal huge and varied armies. Create and control settlements that include housing, farming, and many other buildings, like fountains and lush gardens (if you're Good) or stocks and guillotines (if you're Evil). Multiple tools to help train and improve Creatures are on hand. As well as using sticks, whips, and feathers, players can create their own unique tools."
"The thing I am most proud of is that the game 'makes the player feel like a God'. In Black & White 1, you never felt significant enough - you felt like an errand boy. In Black & White 2 you are a powerful God."
Slashdot Mirror
You are making the incorrect assumption that every "gamer" owns the console they play on. It is possible that hardcore gamer A lives in the same house as non-hardcore gamer B...
I was simply making my assumptions based off the numbers.
For our situation the set of all non-gamers has 3 subsets:
1)The set of non-gamers who do not have a "gamer" in the house at all
2)The set of non-gamers who have a "gamer" in the house, but no Xbox360 (PS2, GameCube, PC, etc...)
3)The set of non-gamers who have a "gamer" in the house and an Xbox360.
The assumption I was making was that subsets 1 and 2 would constitute the bulk of the set of all non-gamers.
Nintendo's the one producing the less technologically advanced solution.
Your statement is true if the only thing you're considering is graphical and processing power.
If you consider other factors, the controller (i.e. User-interface) then Sony and MS have done nothing at all. They just took the exact same controller they already had and slightly changed the shape to fit the average hand better.
Personally I consider a motion-sensitive, totally redesigned controller to be pretty "technologically advanced". If they do it right and get this thing working in an intuitive, user-friendly way I believe it could redefine how we play games, expand the gaming market to previously untapped sources, and could possibly usher in a whole new genre of games that weren't possible when all the control was done through sticks and buttons.
On the other hand, if they screw this controller up and the motion sensing hardware has too many glitches Nintendo will have nothing else to fall back on. Although their online game download service sounds pretty tempting for those of us who grew up on Nintendo, SNES, etc... I would love to play Kid Icarus, Bionic Commando, and all those old classics on a console again. (Yes I am aware of MAME, it just isn't the same)
I say we take this a step further:
1) Go home and find a large cardboard box and tape it shut.
2) Now propose that the box both contains a quantum computer and does not contain a quantum computer.
3) Further propose that the (possible) quantum computer is both running and is not running.
Now we should be able to "ask" the "Magic Box" anything and get an answer back.
I believe that a space elevator is going to be the best method to get lots of mass into orbit, or out to a space station, quickly and cheaply.
i d=3
A few groups are already testing and/or holding competitions to expedite innovations:
Lift Port:
http://www.liftport.com/index.php?site=news&news_
Elevator2010.org:
http://www.elevator2010.org/site/index.html
I think these monetary incentives to innovate are great. Nothing like a little competition to get people thinking creatively and working hard to realize their dreams. It has done wonders for the autonomous vehicle and commercial space shuttle fields, hopefully that will extend to all these other proposed areas.
One other piece of "future tech" I am hoping it will pay off in is the development of the first space elevator. Another organization has set up an X-Prize style competition, one every year until 2010 when I suppose they're hoping to have something viable. Probably a little overly optimistic, but competition brings out the best in people and I think it's great they are harnessing that power for good.
Go check it out: http://www.elevator2010.org/site/index.html They held their first competition last year. You can check out the results and see the pictures in the "Photo Gallery". Hooray for progress!
Everyone should take this opportunity to lock up their nano-vegetables for safe keeping, perhaps in a Buckyball or a small cage made of Carbon Nano-tubes.
I changed the moderation to 4 and read through all the comments. I saw all kinds of things about people using mental hashes, combining parts of words from things on their desks, and several very arcane sounding methods of generating new passwords. But I didn't see much about passphrases.
It's always been my understanding that this is probably the best option, assuming the system will allow 25+ characters for passwords, which, sadly, many don't.
The passphrase "try to crack this password fools", even without any extended characters, would just take too long to try to crack through conventional means. Add in some puncuation and capital letters and it becomes even more difficult to crack. And it is something I can easily remember, moreso than a random password like "E4#b.?8Y". So is there a good reason, aside from many sites only allowing 16 or fewer characters for passwords, not to use passphrases?
Wyrd One
All those simple lifeforms, that wanted to survive, were competing with each other for limited resources. If one lifeform gets a mutation or ability (Thought, planning, tool-use, etc...) that gives it an advantage over the others, then it gets more resources and is more successful.
It is this constant oneupsmanship over millions and millions of years that results in the insanely complex creatures we have roaming all over this planet.
Wyrd One
That's not a fair question. By definition a soldier is trained to be a fighter.
Now if they fought in space... that would be fair contest.
Wyrd-One
The second story in time has already interfered... otherwise the grandparent could not have made a comment about there being a second story, and we would not have this thread going that discusses the future existence of an instance of the first story. Or something like that... Wyrd-One
They also have those flashlights that work by shaking them.
I imagine it might make for a slightly larger cell phone, and I don't know how long the charge lasts... (the flashlight above says if you shake it for 30 seconds you get 5 minutes of light, so that might make for a long shake if you're planning on talking for very long) but this could be another option for those that are used to rapidly moving their arm up and down.
Wyrd-One
If you're interested in this story, you should read the book Blondie24.
It's been awhile since I read it, so I apologize for any inaccuracies in my recollection.
The book is about a couple of guys who set out to make a checkers playing program. Only, they didn't just hard code in the rules for checkers, they gave it as little actual checkers information as they could. Then they had it watch, and learn, and play, and watch, and learn, and play... eventually the program started catching on and became a fairly adept checkers player. The program learned to recognize certain patterns and board positions on its own, and learned to weight certain positions and moves based off what it "observed". After doing that enough it had compiled its own ruleset for playing checkers.
I thought that was an excellent way to go about making an AI for a game. I'm a big believer in the bottom up approach, and this book demonstrates that approach wonderfully.
It's certainly not as fast as just hard-coding the rules, or giving it a table of end-game moves, (which it sucked at for awhile) but it is a very innovative, and interesting, (to me) approach.
Wyrd One
It is indeed. I read GEB many years ago. The chapters on emergence (10, 11, and 12 mostly) really fascinated me. Shortly after finishing GEB I saw this book, Emergence, and ordered it, hoping to expand my knowledge on the subject.
Emergence was good... but to tell you the truth, I found the 3 chapters in GEB to be much more enlightening. I would recommend those 3 chapters in GEB over the book Emergence any day. Especially the "Prelude..." and "..Ant Fugue" discussions before and after chapter 10.
Wyrd One
These are some of the best problem solving minds out there... let's give them some tough, but extremely practical, things to figure out. If they pull this off I would think there are a myriad of uses for a robotic repair platform with two arms; Shuttles, satellites, Mir, submarine-type vehicles, etc... and someday, the space elevator.
Wyrd-One
When your email system goes down, and your biggest customer calls and wants it back up, now, you've got no one to blame with open source except yourself. I've found that sometimes the customer will calm down a bit if you tell them you've got an open ticket with level 2 support at Company X.
Then, when it takes two days to get them back up and running, and they've lost thousands of dollars of business, you can just give them the number for Company X and let the customer chew them out, instead of you.
Wyrd-One
Now I believe "Black and White 2" will be a different story. A good review can be found here: http://www.totalvideogames.com/pages/articles/inde x.php?article_id=5638
Some of the finer points from the preview: