"This is not the court system we are dealing with, this is free enterprise, and is little different than me refusing to personally associate with anyone under 5'0", simply because that is how I do business."
Wouldn't this be illegal in the US? I doubt the short are a specifically recognized class but there's gotta be a way to take a run at the courts with it.
But judge! they could not see over the dash board! I run a driving school!
"(The same probably holds true for most of the people on/.)"
All of us reading Slashdot hope this is true. Doesn't make it so. The rest of your post gives examples connected to technical knowledge and ability. If that is any definition of intelligence in a broad sense we--we as a species--are screwed. I'm no "there are eighty-seven equally valid types of intelligence" pantywaist. I'm as elitist as any Slash' denizen.
Problem is, I've met too many ferociously intelligent people from too many walks of life, from bum to line cook to advertising exec. Do you understand what a marketing research consultant really does? Doubt it. Could you learn? Yes. Would you be as good as it? Likely not. Are you in the least bit interested?
Perhaps all the tech people should bend their brains around making intuitive tools for those more interested in marketing research or deglazing pans. That'd show 'em. Worth serious moolah too.
"The reason they have gone after Kazaa and not say... the maker(s) of bit torrent, is that Kazaa was designed from the get go for copyright infringement."
Ridiculous. They went after Kazaa because it was the most popular. Now they are going after 'torrent.
Fractint on my 10MHz XT. EGA resolutions. Grand times.
Whenever I set up a new system I deep zoom a Mandlebrot (not THE Mandlebrot--deep zooming him must be illegal) until the system chokes to the will-take-twenty-four-hours point. Reaching that depth takes seconds. Moore's Law, yer arse is grass. Not that I'm deep zooming it or anything.
What's historically been Apple's ready cash v. market share/net profit/other measures?
Comparisons across industries are always dodgy but certainly Wal*Mart is a better choice than Walgreens. Wal*Mart effects the economies of nations, Walgreens effects the economies of counties.
"Ok, so we have Linux doing tens of teraflops in processing, FreeBSD doing tens of petabits in networking,... What other records can Open Source smash wide open?"
"Liberal activists are not exactly known for being the militant types (just ask any Republican), and are more often than not pigeonholed as hippies, peaceniks, treehuggers and even cowards by the more militant right wing."
Except when being pigeonholed as (and less frequently actually being) violent radicals. The Earth Liberation Front are avowed treehuggers and arguably cowards but they're certainly militant and aggressive.
The militant of any side--Left, Right, Chosen by God A, God B or God C or given instructions by Dryfus the Magical Fern Lord--will always call the perceived other side(s) cowards AND pacifists AND scary violent armies.
This makes no sense. If you want something on your computer, you have to install the software. So click the little Openoffice.org button during installation and poof, it is on your computer. No compiles, none of the hassle you seem to be implying. On Windows you have to pop in the cd and click setup.exe, so how is this any different?"
This'll sound silly, but the nomenclature matters. Not to me, or to you, but for most change the name and it is a new beast. Windows for all its many, many flaws has hit critical mass not only in the market but in the public mind. The jump from 95 to XP might suck rocks and be no better or much worse than another install or update but the terms will be familiar. How many times have you tried to tele-help a relative or a friend get a new "windows" program installed or working only to belatedly realize the person has a Mac and is using windows as a generic term? I've a large extended family and I'm the nerd-in-genes so perhaps my experience is atypical...
"Funny how I can just pop in a Gentoo livecd and have it work, but I have to rebuild the fucking iso to get the Windows setup program to even start!"
"Nobody said a switch from Windows to linux would be painless."
Practically speaking, switching must be included in ease of use. This gives Windows a ridiculously strong leg up. Hey, I'm not happy about it either.
"Once your dad realizes he no longer has to buy his bridge game, that it and a lot of the rest of his software is just plain free, I'm sure he will perfectly happy with the concept. He won't understand it at first, but that is to be expected."
Agreed, though I fear the appeal of free is overstated. Free != freedom nor does free = revolution. Linux reminds me very much of my years spent trying to explain the benefits of being online, pre web. Everyone thought I was nuts: too difficult, not enough gained, what do online & modem & baud & && mean? Fifteen years later I noticed an anthropology prof had published a paper about online cultures. I called him up and reminded him he'd rejected mine on the same topic c1990. Jackass.:)
A question: is there or could there practically be a distro spanning Linux advocacy group? Paid lobbyists, funded from IBM, maybe Sun, RedHat equivalents, etc. I'm thinking specifically to approach & lobby game companies and related hardware makers but generally as well. Lobby ATI for decent drivers, SoundBlaster, educate Congress etc. Such a group probably exists; freely admit I don't carefully follow Linux-state-of-the-state info.
Never said or suggested compiling would ever be required.
"Why do people still say this crap? With a modern linux distribution you do not *have* to compile anything ever. You want a server, install the binary server packages"
Compile. Binary. Server. There goes 95% of users.
"You want a desktop, install the binary desktop packages."
Binary. Packages. There go the rest.
I can without a doubt say I will not be installing any Linux distro on my dad's computer any time soon. (Yes, I semi-regularly try some distros on dual boot with XP or 98, yes I know how to compile binaries, etc., etc.) What a nightmare that'd be when I get the call asking why his new fax or, much worse, the five year old printer from uncle Bob doesn't and *can't* work. Doing XP phone-to-relative-support is lousy enough.
That Linux software is free and not in stores is great. It excites me. It won't excite my dad. More phone calls: I have to download it? Is that like the poker site your brother got? I'm not paying anyone online. It's free? What do they want from me? Where's the box? What's GNOME? Does that run on Windows? I can get this "free" stuff where? Huh? Why can't I play bridge, I bought the game!
A huge part of ease of use is point of purchase physical in-store software & hardware sales. My dad would at minimum want a "MADE FOR DEBIAN" thingy in a gold star. This was why I posted. It's something too often missed in ease of use discussions.
The shifting of proprietary closed source vendors to online distribution is a tremendous boon for Linux. It will acclimate the my dads of the world to downloading software. Short of Windows tomorrow tripling in price AND summoning the devil AND a pissed off Wario I can't think of another shift more likely to bring Linux to my Dad and--more importantly--my Dad to Linux.
Me, I'll run Linux when I've got a reason to do so. When I get off my butt and turn the 500MHz Athlon in the closet into a print server or firewall.
I love Linux, I love the idea, but I've got no reason to use it. XP tax to play thousands of games? Deal.
Is Linux gaining? Heck ya. Will it continue to do so? Heck ya. Is the current ease-of-ownership remotely near that of Windows for the casual or ignorant user? Hell no.
"We're just about at the point of pulling past Microsoft in the desktop ease-of-use department. The problems are all people-related now."
I'm all for challengers, and Windows is hardly elegant, but any OS that *ever* invokes the word compile for *any* reason the end user sees or needs is not in contention for ease-of-use. Much of--though certainly not all of--the reason Windows is such a mess is because it supports such an astonishing number of not only current but ancient hardware & aps, more or less out of the box. It may crash far too often in daily use as a result, but your random game or database from the 80's or 90's is reasonably likely to run, as is your old Wingmaster flight yoke. This is no small thing.
Ultimate ease-of-use with adoption as the goal is a three part package:
1) Tolerable, comprehensible interface (pleasurable is a bonus; so is, for most, powerful).
2) Not only a suite of aps (word processing, browser, email, etc) but the ability to grab random stuff at the store or online and have them run. No compiling, no -switches.
"Yes, but fortunately (or unfortunately?) penises aren't growing at the rate that mailboxes are. Size is good up to a point, but a 1Tb penis would make it hard to walk. It would have to be on a dedicated server, so to speak."
Ernie Smith, Don't be dragged down!
Increase your penile support appartatus (sic) 200%! All natural! ancint (sic) herbal tretment (sic) of Nigerian Princes!
"In music, B-sides are either incomplete tracks that the artist never finished or thought to be worth finishing. Or they're songs that they were just playing around with and had no real intention to release."
Huh? They were primarily the songs the labels considered good but without as much sales potentional or songs the bands really fought to get included. Same thing, really: songs rightly or wrongly viewed as riskier bets. Many bands ended up with their best tracks as B-sides. That was 45's; with CD singles we're more likely to get throw-aways and silliness because there's space for more than an A and a B.
I'd be happy if all the PC game publishers ditched CDs for DVDs. DVD players are dirt cheap--they must be 'cause even I've got one!--so by fiat I declare the era of 4 CD games to be OVER.
Even with jet fuel it wasn't enough to melt the steel. The problem is that steel loses much of it's strength at high temperatures, making it liable to bend or snap under load."
The impacts blew off the spray-on insulation protecting the steel. Without it a large spreading fire was enough to weaken the steel. Jet fuel was the match: it lit the fire but didn't keep it burning.
More contentious is whether the buildings should have been able to avoid collapse even with the weakened steel and structural damage. In an attempt to maximize contiguous internal floor space and use less material the towers were designed very differently from earlier 'scrapers. (Anyone know if later buildings used their design?) Some claim this doomed the buildings; others that it's the only reason they stayed up as long as they did.
"Now all we need is some decent games. It would be very cool if Sony would direct some of their lucre towards obtaining rights to M.U.L.E. and Mail Order Monsters and put them on this system."
Ssh! Don't wake them up or we'll get M.U.L.E. IX: Spikey Purple Hair Localized Platinum Edition.
"Poker bot are a different kettle of fish from aim-bots. Without a solid understanding of the strategies of playing poker and the ways you weigh between them, and the way you judge other players, you couldn't write a sucessful poker playing program. And the level of understanding you need isn't going to be gained from any of the books on the market. You have to play"
I've got math grad friends (I count on my toes) who read a couple books and started playing online. One quit his job three months later and pays the bills playing. He does it almost totally on statistics. Online poker is different than real life because there are so many more fresh fish.
The assumption is a bot should play as a very good human. If the goal of a bot is to maximize returns, have it track competent players and avoid them, play the rest on pure numbers, and run it on several sites simultaneously. Needn't make big returns as long as it's all over all hours. It'll get locked out eventually and then it becomes a spam/spam blocking arms race. Or, better, collect until things heat up then sell it.
You're correct poker is different than aim-bots but I say qualitatively rather than quantitatively. Absolutely, playing having played the game would help! Regardless, my basic point (obnoxious "bzzt" aside) stands: there is not always a need to play a game well to master cheating it.
Had I cash to throw around, screw the X-prize, I'd offer a bounty on the first great go program.
"If you suck at playing poker and write a bot to do it for you, your bot will likely suck as badly as you do..."
Really? I suppose those writing auto target cheats for FPS games are the best shots around and the twits killing me (cheating) in Tangleword with simple programs would otherwise be able to best my 2500 rank.
Writing a successful program to play or assist in the play of a game may or may not have a darned thing to do with the coder's skill with the game.
SpaceWar and Adventure both get screen time. Rogue does not.
I've got an Analog magazine from the 60's with a long article about SpaceWar. The coverage is so breathless I imagine the article ended because its writer passed out.
My only serious quibble with the shows is I'd've found time to squeeze in Balance of Power.
"they're just *now* getting a demo out? Doesn't that usually come *before* the game is released?"
Let's see. I've got a game that millions pre-ordered years in advance. It's arguably the most anticipated computer game ever. It will sell out on the first day.
What exactly do I gain with a pre-release demo?
Seriously folks: why on earth would they demo DOOM 3 before the release? People were going to buy it anyway. Heck, a demo might well have decreased early sales as some (such as me) found it maybe the third best FPS released so far this year. An early demo would have gained them *nothing*. Releasing one now will help pick up a second wave or purchasers.
Demos are essential for selling WidgetMaster: The Velvet Antenna of Dragondom. DOOM 3 didn't need one.
Doom 3 is the best tech demo ever made and possibly the best mod platform ever made but I'd rank it third or forth best FPS this year.
It's not scary, it's cheap. Yes, it will startle you because stuff will appear right beside the character. After the reload the trigger point is known (though they're almost always obvious anyway).
While I can in no way slight his technical skills, I welcome a game industry without his hand in actual *games*. He freely admits he doesn't play them and the team freely admits how they made the game: they watched movies and played earlier, scarier games. It's a good drinking game: shout the steal first (System Shock 2! John Carpenter! Doom!) and the rest drink.
There are rumors of a SS2 remake with Doom 3 engine. Now *that* would be a game.
This is not a troll. On balance I enjoyed Doom 3. Still, what are we losing here?
1) a great coder 2) a figure fanboys wank at 3) a negative figure in game design 4) the big supporter of OpenGL
Number one probably won't hurt much (guessing; it's certainly no positive), ditching two & three are positive, four will hurt Linux and may hurt the rest of us.
"If I look up Novelette in Merriam Webster it links to the definition of Novella."
Better is to check the standards used for the specific award. These have changed over time but for the 2005 Worldcon they will be as follows:
Short Story: 40,000
"[Is this] proof that Sci-Fi as a genre is more suited to 20-30 pages of prose"
Arguably (I'd put the magic length at the long end of the novella) but this...
"and that when it hits the 300-400 page region it is less saleable to the general public?"...is 100% incorrect. The paying short fiction market is on life support. Novels sell. Heck, series and trilogies are almost mandatory. Few people read for pleasure and most of those that do prefer to mindlessly inhale potato chip equivalents like endless Wheel of Time releases.
SF is effectively the only paying market for the short story and has been for some time. (OK, there's also a bit of mystery and, er, The New Yorker.) Writers most comfortable at the novella length (a past example would be Kate Wilhelm) are doomed: there is no market.
The way to make a living is to write fantasy trilogies. Better, to write movie and game tie-ins. Truly gifted writers like Terry Bisson ("Bears Discover Fire", Talking Man, Pirates of the Universe, www.terrybisson.com) pay the bills writing novelizations of Terminator 2 and The Fifth Element.
"A better approach would be if you could tell your person to make 10 pots and he goes about it automatically without the monotony of clicking through every bloody dialog to do it."
Already in Telling 1, essentially. Many click tasks can be done offline once you've done enough manually. Further, there are many machines which automate the boring tasks. Instead of making dozens of bricks, drop hundreds of sand & mud & straw (made by the thousands in greenhouses) into your brick machine. Walk away.
The game was not intended as communal. The players kept pulling it that way to the bewilderment and occasional frustration of its creator. He wanted more conflict, designed tests to that end, it somehow always ended up (mostly) competitive but generous and friendly.
A brand new player might well be better than average at a difficult or irritating task (making glass, making charcoal, gem cutting) and can trade those skills for all the crud they'd otherwise have to make. I can't cut gems to save my life; I often bought them from newbs who had the knack and paid enough for them to start a small camp instantly.
"Now the world is massive, but it looks the same. The graphics are pretty sucky too. [...] Wandering from one end of the world to the other to collect seeds or fungus, takes ages and is also very tedious even when you gain waypoints"
Telling 2 was designed specifically to reduce the travel time & irritation. The world is smaller, running on roads is faster, and there's an automated chariot system (think: subway).
Or, heck, look at it this way: by the end of TElling 1 someone had built an *amusement park*.:)
"My prediction: This game is absolutely ripe for the picking by people who are good at backstabbing and sycophantry. People who are highly skilled and socially unskilled will be reduced to workerbees, while the PHB types will wind up cliquing their way to the top and lording it over the rest. I can't wait to see this..."
I've played Telling 1 for the last year and exactly the opposite has happened. A friendlier online game does not exist--it is sometimes too friendly.
Tale 2 is definitely in beta and it shows. I recommend using a free trial account and taking a look at what Tale 1 became. It's a ghost town now (game ends Tuesday) but a truly astonishing one.
The richest of Tale 1 were the socially incompetent Slashdot type because they figured the exact algorithims for specific tasks and were far more efficient. But...truly, there is no way to "rule" the game because the tasks are so varied. I'd intended to focus on Art (breeding animals, creating fireworks, tile mosaics, etc) but somehow ended up in Leadership. Got fairly high in the ranks of that Discipline (one of seven and not more important than the others) but I was certainly not wealthy OR powerful.
One way to describe the game is Crafting on Steroids but it's not accurate. I did little crafting; there's no requirement to do any (though most will, certainly).
I'm surprised this game doesn't get more love from the Slashdot crowd. It's full of complicated puzzles (in beta we're trying to figure out the rules governing the new mining system) and it's got A SHINY LINUX CLIENT!
ATITD is a truly amazing game. And, unlike The Sims Online or There, it IS a game.
Slashdot Mirror
"This is not the court system we are dealing with, this is free enterprise, and is little different than me refusing to personally associate with anyone under 5'0", simply because that is how I do business."
Wouldn't this be illegal in the US? I doubt the short are a specifically recognized class but there's gotta be a way to take a run at the courts with it.
But judge! they could not see over the dash board! I run a driving school!
"For example the 9800 pro came out over a year ago but is still $350-400 dollars."
Just checked Newegg. US dollars, PC 9800 Pro cards of various configurations are running $180-280. Lousy purchase. Spring for the 9800XT.
My 9700 Pro was $250 a year and a half ago. Best hardware purchase I ever made.
PS The mass market for video cards is integrated chipsets
"I'm smarter than most of the people I know."
/.)"
You may well be.
"(The same probably holds true for most of the people on
All of us reading Slashdot hope this is true. Doesn't make it so. The rest of your post gives examples connected to technical knowledge and ability. If that is any definition of intelligence in a broad sense we--we as a species--are screwed. I'm no "there are eighty-seven equally valid types of intelligence" pantywaist. I'm as elitist as any Slash' denizen.
Problem is, I've met too many ferociously intelligent people from too many walks of life, from bum to line cook to advertising exec. Do you understand what a marketing research consultant really does? Doubt it. Could you learn? Yes. Would you be as good as it? Likely not. Are you in the least bit interested?
Perhaps all the tech people should bend their brains around making intuitive tools for those more interested in marketing research or deglazing pans. That'd show 'em. Worth serious moolah too.
"The reason they have gone after Kazaa and not say... the maker(s) of bit torrent, is that Kazaa was designed from the get go for copyright infringement."
Ridiculous. They went after Kazaa because it was the most popular. Now they are going after 'torrent.
Fractint on my 10MHz XT. EGA resolutions. Grand times.
Whenever I set up a new system I deep zoom a Mandlebrot (not THE Mandlebrot--deep zooming him must be illegal) until the system chokes to the will-take-twenty-four-hours point. Reaching that depth takes seconds. Moore's Law, yer arse is grass. Not that I'm deep zooming it or anything.
What's historically been Apple's ready cash v. market share/net profit/other measures?
Comparisons across industries are always dodgy but certainly Wal*Mart is a better choice than Walgreens. Wal*Mart effects the economies of nations, Walgreens effects the economies of counties.
"Ok, so we have Linux doing tens of teraflops in processing, FreeBSD doing tens of petabits in networking, ... What other records can Open Source smash wide open?"
Tux Racer at 1200 frame per second.
You'd think it'd be obvious.
"Liberal activists are not exactly known for being the militant types (just ask any Republican), and are more often than not pigeonholed as hippies, peaceniks, treehuggers and even cowards by the more militant right wing."
Except when being pigeonholed as (and less frequently actually being) violent radicals. The Earth Liberation Front are avowed treehuggers and arguably cowards but they're certainly militant and aggressive.
The militant of any side--Left, Right, Chosen by God A, God B or God C or given instructions by Dryfus the Magical Fern Lord--will always call the perceived other side(s) cowards AND pacifists AND scary violent armies.
"Binary. Packages. There go the rest.
:)
This makes no sense. If you want something on your computer, you have to install the software. So click the little Openoffice.org button during installation and poof, it is on your computer. No compiles, none of the hassle you seem to be implying. On Windows you have to pop in the cd and click setup.exe, so how is this any different?"
This'll sound silly, but the nomenclature matters. Not to me, or to you, but for most change the name and it is a new beast. Windows for all its many, many flaws has hit critical mass not only in the market but in the public mind. The jump from 95 to XP might suck rocks and be no better or much worse than another install or update but the terms will be familiar. How many times have you tried to tele-help a relative or a friend get a new "windows" program installed or working only to belatedly realize the person has a Mac and is using windows as a generic term? I've a large extended family and I'm the nerd-in-genes so perhaps my experience is atypical...
"Funny how I can just pop in a Gentoo livecd and have it work, but I have to rebuild the fucking iso to get the Windows setup program to even start!"
"Nobody said a switch from Windows to linux would be painless."
Practically speaking, switching must be included in ease of use. This gives Windows a ridiculously strong leg up. Hey, I'm not happy about it either.
"Once your dad realizes he no longer has to buy his bridge game, that it and a lot of the rest of his software is just plain free, I'm sure he will perfectly happy with the concept. He won't understand it at first, but that is to be expected."
Agreed, though I fear the appeal of free is overstated. Free != freedom nor does free = revolution. Linux reminds me very much of my years spent trying to explain the benefits of being online, pre web. Everyone thought I was nuts: too difficult, not enough gained, what do online & modem & baud & && mean? Fifteen years later I noticed an anthropology prof had published a paper about online cultures. I called him up and reminded him he'd rejected mine on the same topic c1990. Jackass.
A question: is there or could there practically be a distro spanning Linux advocacy group? Paid lobbyists, funded from IBM, maybe Sun, RedHat equivalents, etc. I'm thinking specifically to approach & lobby game companies and related hardware makers but generally as well. Lobby ATI for decent drivers, SoundBlaster, educate Congress etc. Such a group probably exists; freely admit I don't carefully follow Linux-state-of-the-state info.
Never said or suggested compiling would ever be required.
"Why do people still say this crap? With a modern linux distribution you do not *have* to compile anything ever. You want a server, install the binary server packages"
Compile. Binary. Server. There goes 95% of users.
"You want a desktop, install the binary desktop packages."
Binary. Packages. There go the rest.
I can without a doubt say I will not be installing any Linux distro on my dad's computer any time soon. (Yes, I semi-regularly try some distros on dual boot with XP or 98, yes I know how to compile binaries, etc., etc.) What a nightmare that'd be when I get the call asking why his new fax or, much worse, the five year old printer from uncle Bob doesn't and *can't* work. Doing XP phone-to-relative-support is lousy enough.
That Linux software is free and not in stores is great. It excites me. It won't excite my dad. More phone calls: I have to download it? Is that like the poker site your brother got? I'm not paying anyone online. It's free? What do they want from me? Where's the box? What's GNOME? Does that run on Windows? I can get this "free" stuff where? Huh? Why can't I play bridge, I bought the game!
A huge part of ease of use is point of purchase physical in-store software & hardware sales. My dad would at minimum want a "MADE FOR DEBIAN" thingy in a gold star. This was why I posted. It's something too often missed in ease of use discussions.
The shifting of proprietary closed source vendors to online distribution is a tremendous boon for Linux. It will acclimate the my dads of the world to downloading software. Short of Windows tomorrow tripling in price AND summoning the devil AND a pissed off Wario I can't think of another shift more likely to bring Linux to my Dad and--more importantly--my Dad to Linux.
Me, I'll run Linux when I've got a reason to do so. When I get off my butt and turn the 500MHz Athlon in the closet into a print server or firewall.
I love Linux, I love the idea, but I've got no reason to use it. XP tax to play thousands of games? Deal.
Is Linux gaining? Heck ya. Will it continue to do so? Heck ya. Is the current ease-of-ownership remotely near that of Windows for the casual or ignorant user? Hell no.
"We're just about at the point of pulling past Microsoft in the desktop ease-of-use department. The problems are all people-related now."
I'm all for challengers, and Windows is hardly elegant, but any OS that *ever* invokes the word compile for *any* reason the end user sees or needs is not in contention for ease-of-use. Much of--though certainly not all of--the reason Windows is such a mess is because it supports such an astonishing number of not only current but ancient hardware & aps, more or less out of the box. It may crash far too often in daily use as a result, but your random game or database from the 80's or 90's is reasonably likely to run, as is your old Wingmaster flight yoke. This is no small thing.
Ultimate ease-of-use with adoption as the goal is a three part package:
1) Tolerable, comprehensible interface (pleasurable is a bonus; so is, for most, powerful).
2) Not only a suite of aps (word processing, browser, email, etc) but the ability to grab random stuff at the store or online and have them run. No compiling, no -switches.
3) Same as #2 but for hardware.
Send flames to...oh heck, just send 'em to me!
"Yes, but fortunately (or unfortunately?) penises aren't growing at the rate that mailboxes are. Size is good up to a point, but a 1Tb penis would make it hard to walk. It would have to be on a dedicated server, so to speak."
Ernie Smith, Don't be dragged down!
Increase your penile support appartatus (sic) 200%! All natural! ancint (sic) herbal tretment (sic) of Nigerian Princes!
"In music, B-sides are either incomplete tracks that the artist never finished or thought to be worth finishing. Or they're songs that they were just playing around with and had no real intention to release."
Huh? They were primarily the songs the labels considered good but without as much sales potentional or songs the bands really fought to get included. Same thing, really: songs rightly or wrongly viewed as riskier bets. Many bands ended up with their best tracks as B-sides. That was 45's; with CD singles we're more likely to get throw-aways and silliness because there's space for more than an A and a B.
I'd be happy if all the PC game publishers ditched CDs for DVDs. DVD players are dirt cheap--they must be 'cause even I've got one!--so by fiat I declare the era of 4 CD games to be OVER.
" 'hot enough to melt the beams'
Even with jet fuel it wasn't enough to melt the steel. The problem is that steel loses much of it's strength at high temperatures, making it liable to bend or snap under load."
The impacts blew off the spray-on insulation protecting the steel. Without it a large spreading fire was enough to weaken the steel. Jet fuel was the match: it lit the fire but didn't keep it burning.
More contentious is whether the buildings should have been able to avoid collapse even with the weakened steel and structural damage. In an attempt to maximize contiguous internal floor space and use less material the towers were designed very differently from earlier 'scrapers. (Anyone know if later buildings used their design?) Some claim this doomed the buildings; others that it's the only reason they stayed up as long as they did.
"Are you still using Lotus 1-2-3, too?"
You've got to see this Windows 1.0 thing it uses. The interface of the future!
"Now all we need is some decent games. It would be very cool if Sony would direct some of their lucre towards obtaining rights to M.U.L.E. and Mail Order Monsters and put them on this system."
Ssh! Don't wake them up or we'll get M.U.L.E. IX: Spikey Purple Hair Localized Platinum Edition.
"Poker bot are a different kettle of fish from aim-bots. Without a solid understanding of the strategies of playing poker and the ways you weigh between them, and the way you judge other players, you couldn't write a sucessful poker playing program. And the level of understanding you need isn't going to be gained from any of the books on the market. You have to play"
I've got math grad friends (I count on my toes) who read a couple books and started playing online. One quit his job three months later and pays the bills playing. He does it almost totally on statistics. Online poker is different than real life because there are so many more fresh fish.
The assumption is a bot should play as a very good human. If the goal of a bot is to maximize returns, have it track competent players and avoid them, play the rest on pure numbers, and run it on several sites simultaneously. Needn't make big returns as long as it's all over all hours. It'll get locked out eventually and then it becomes a spam/spam blocking arms race. Or, better, collect until things heat up then sell it.
You're correct poker is different than aim-bots but I say qualitatively rather than quantitatively. Absolutely, playing having played the game would help! Regardless, my basic point (obnoxious "bzzt" aside) stands: there is not always a need to play a game well to master cheating it.
Had I cash to throw around, screw the X-prize, I'd offer a bounty on the first great go program.
"If you suck at playing poker and write a bot to do it for you, your bot will likely suck as badly as you do..."
Really? I suppose those writing auto target cheats for FPS games are the best shots around and the twits killing me (cheating) in Tangleword with simple programs would otherwise be able to best my 2500 rank.
Writing a successful program to play or assist in the play of a game may or may not have a darned thing to do with the coder's skill with the game.
SpaceWar and Adventure both get screen time. Rogue does not. I've got an Analog magazine from the 60's with a long article about SpaceWar. The coverage is so breathless I imagine the article ended because its writer passed out. My only serious quibble with the shows is I'd've found time to squeeze in Balance of Power.
...for waiting until people finally finished Morrowind.
"they're just *now* getting a demo out? Doesn't that usually come *before* the game is released?"
Let's see. I've got a game that millions pre-ordered years in advance. It's arguably the most anticipated computer game ever. It will sell out on the first day.
What exactly do I gain with a pre-release demo?
Seriously folks: why on earth would they demo DOOM 3 before the release? People were going to buy it anyway. Heck, a demo might well have decreased early sales as some (such as me) found it maybe the third best FPS released so far this year. An early demo would have gained them *nothing*. Releasing one now will help pick up a second wave or purchasers.
Demos are essential for selling WidgetMaster: The Velvet Antenna of Dragondom. DOOM 3 didn't need one.
"At least he'll go out with a bang"
He will?
Doom 3 is the best tech demo ever made and possibly the best mod platform ever made but I'd rank it third or forth best FPS this year.
It's not scary, it's cheap. Yes, it will startle you because stuff will appear right beside the character. After the reload the trigger point is known (though they're almost always obvious anyway).
While I can in no way slight his technical skills, I welcome a game industry without his hand in actual *games*. He freely admits he doesn't play them and the team freely admits how they made the game: they watched movies and played earlier, scarier games. It's a good drinking game: shout the steal first (System Shock 2! John Carpenter! Doom!) and the rest drink.
There are rumors of a SS2 remake with Doom 3 engine. Now *that* would be a game.
This is not a troll. On balance I enjoyed Doom 3. Still, what are we losing here?
1) a great coder
2) a figure fanboys wank at
3) a negative figure in game design
4) the big supporter of OpenGL
Number one probably won't hurt much (guessing; it's certainly no positive), ditching two & three are positive, four will hurt Linux and may hurt the rest of us.
"If I look up Novelette in Merriam Webster it links to the definition of Novella."
...is 100% incorrect. The paying short fiction market is on life support. Novels sell. Heck, series and trilogies are almost mandatory. Few people read for pleasure and most of those that do prefer to mindlessly inhale potato chip equivalents like endless Wheel of Time releases.
Better is to check the standards used for the specific award. These have changed over time but for the 2005 Worldcon they will be as follows:
Short Story: 40,000
"[Is this] proof that Sci-Fi as a genre is more suited to 20-30 pages of prose"
Arguably (I'd put the magic length at the long end of the novella) but this...
"and that when it hits the 300-400 page region it is less saleable to the general public?"
SF is effectively the only paying market for the short story and has been for some time. (OK, there's also a bit of mystery and, er, The New Yorker.) Writers most comfortable at the novella length (a past example would be Kate Wilhelm) are doomed: there is no market.
The way to make a living is to write fantasy trilogies. Better, to write movie and game tie-ins. Truly gifted writers like Terry Bisson ("Bears Discover Fire", Talking Man, Pirates of the Universe, www.terrybisson.com) pay the bills writing novelizations of Terminator 2 and The Fifth Element.
"A better approach would be if you could tell your person to make 10 pots and he goes about it automatically without the monotony of clicking through every bloody dialog to do it." Already in Telling 1, essentially. Many click tasks can be done offline once you've done enough manually. Further, there are many machines which automate the boring tasks. Instead of making dozens of bricks, drop hundreds of sand & mud & straw (made by the thousands in greenhouses) into your brick machine. Walk away. The game was not intended as communal. The players kept pulling it that way to the bewilderment and occasional frustration of its creator. He wanted more conflict, designed tests to that end, it somehow always ended up (mostly) competitive but generous and friendly. A brand new player might well be better than average at a difficult or irritating task (making glass, making charcoal, gem cutting) and can trade those skills for all the crud they'd otherwise have to make. I can't cut gems to save my life; I often bought them from newbs who had the knack and paid enough for them to start a small camp instantly. "Now the world is massive, but it looks the same. The graphics are pretty sucky too. [...] Wandering from one end of the world to the other to collect seeds or fungus, takes ages and is also very tedious even when you gain waypoints" Telling 2 was designed specifically to reduce the travel time & irritation. The world is smaller, running on roads is faster, and there's an automated chariot system (think: subway). Or, heck, look at it this way: by the end of TElling 1 someone had built an *amusement park*. :)
Now that I've trolled in the subject line...
"My prediction: This game is absolutely ripe for the picking by people who are good at backstabbing and sycophantry. People who are highly skilled and socially unskilled will be reduced to workerbees, while the PHB types will wind up cliquing their way to the top and lording it over the rest. I can't wait to see this..."
I've played Telling 1 for the last year and exactly the opposite has happened. A friendlier online game does not exist--it is sometimes too friendly.
Tale 2 is definitely in beta and it shows. I recommend using a free trial account and taking a look at what Tale 1 became. It's a ghost town now (game ends Tuesday) but a truly astonishing one.
The richest of Tale 1 were the socially incompetent Slashdot type because they figured the exact algorithims for specific tasks and were far more efficient. But...truly, there is no way to "rule" the game because the tasks are so varied. I'd intended to focus on Art (breeding animals, creating fireworks, tile mosaics, etc) but somehow ended up in Leadership. Got fairly high in the ranks of that Discipline (one of seven and not more important than the others) but I was certainly not wealthy OR powerful.
One way to describe the game is Crafting on Steroids but it's not accurate. I did little crafting; there's no requirement to do any (though most will, certainly).
I'm surprised this game doesn't get more love from the Slashdot crowd. It's full of complicated puzzles (in beta we're trying to figure out the rules governing the new mining system) and it's got A SHINY LINUX CLIENT!
ATITD is a truly amazing game. And, unlike The Sims Online or There, it IS a game.