That's my point, if Topclick is receiving my search terms, sending them to google, getting the results and displaying them to me, they have the opportunity to analyze and record the HREF's vs the Search strings and all that data without too much difficulty. When you do a search on topclick it returns results from google with the topclick banner on the top of the page - so it is filtering the results that are returned.
I don't know anything about the SEC filing, but if they are running software to ensure that all searches are relayed through their server before being submitted to Google, and then routed back to the user - ie proxying the search so to speak - then it would be a relatively small matter to record the search strings being relayed in a database and index them to determine which are most commonly used.
Since the site is apparently running PHP amongst other things, this could be little more than an elaborate PHP script and a Mysql database. I could figure out something comparable with no more than a few hours to experiment.
Just a thought, but they have said elsewhere that they have a product they plan to announce in the future. The search site is merely part of the package. From the name "TopClick" I would assume that while they will not be tracking any personal information, they *will* be tracking the number of clicks made on each URL in the database. Presumably they plan to capitalize on this information somehow. Tracking queries in this manner ought to be fairly straightforward, but if the site gets lots of usage, they can combine the google info on best sources of information with the topclick info on most popular destinations to derrive information they can sell somehow - presumably to advertisers.
All the while completely preserving the anonymity of their users while they search. Not a bad tradeoff if they don't abuse it in any way.
They have a specific product (presumably privacy related I assume) that they will be announcing shortly. I don't know anything more than that, but the search service is an inducement to use their site but its not their main product.
Mind you I support the idea of perserving internet anonymity whereever possible. Plus its nice to see a large scale and promising site use PHP!
Actually there is work being done on the Interplanetary Network Protocol (IPN) at this time. There is an article on it here and here (and yes, we suggested this story to Rob and the boys and got turned down for some reason). Its quite a fascinating task to tackle.
Disclaimer: I work for spaceref.com just so you know...
I mean its nice to see someone admit it publically, but it comes as no suprise to me that the US intelligence community works for the benefit of US corporations - US politicians work for the benefit of US corporations as well since thats who pays for them. It takes so much cash to be elected in a modern democracy that only those with the good corporate connections can *afford* to get elected. Do you think those corporations fund candidates solely out of the kindness of their hearts?
True democracy is a myth these days. We are governed by those with the money to buy the politicians their offices. I think anyone who truly believes otherwise is living in a dream world.
(Mind you there are some exceptions, Switzerland seems to have a good democratic system from what I have read).
"Seeing basic rights disposed of in such a cavalier manner for the sake of convenience"
And is this sort of treatment the thing you want to display to your kids where the right to free speech is concerned. "Yeah, kid its important, thats why its in the Constitution - now shut up and stop trying to tell me its important you read about censorship on the peacefire.org website. I am your Parent, I tell you what you can say or do, remember that"
It is obviously due to the fact that to the US, US Law supercedes all other laws, and they have the economic and military might to shove their decisions down the throats of anyone who disagrees. For some incomprehensible reason, the Canadian Government and legal system just goes along with any decision made in the states and never has the balls to challenge them. I can only assume our government is the best that money can buy - and was bought with US dollars.
The US Empire is only beginning to flex its muscles....
So if we return to using geographical components in the domain name system, are all the US companies going to start including.us on the end of their names?
It has long bothered me that because the internet was started in the US, the.com,.org and.net domain extensions are by assumption located in the US (even if this is no longer the case) and all other locations must use a national code in their domains (ie be marked as "foreigners" to the US).
This sort of US-centric thinking is really quite annoying and pervades modern western culture.
Wow, the quality and intelligence normally found in many posts on/. seems to have disappeared today leaving us with nothing but ignorant fucks who can barely form a sentance, let alone actually post a question for Jon Katz. If you don't like his writing, if you think he is wrong in his basic assumptions - THEN USE YOUR FUCKING BRAINS and post a question that challenges him to respond. Either than or shut the fuck up. Nothing is more irritating that reading the drek that appears on slashdot these days. I read practically this whole thread and only saw 1 question posted to JK out of perhaps 60 replies. How fucking pathetic.
If the responses that this thread has produced are indicative of Geekdom today, perhaps I want to reconsider my membership.
I for one am looking forward to reading both the book and his replies to the questions asked here - then considering them and making up my own mind.
Now, here is my (lame) question for JK: "Given that the publishing industry has historically not "gotten it" - did you have any trouble finding a publisher to publish this book?"
Okay, I installed BeOS 4.5 on my home system (it now triple boots between Win98/Linux/Be). It installed flawlessly, recognized my hardware properly, I simply had to choose a few options and fill in my internet settings. Up and running in under 20 minutes flat.
It works beautifully. I had heard it performed well with animations, multimedia etc, so I opened up 4 animated pictures, and played a music CD without a single glitch (and this is on a fairly typical system: AMD K2-6 400 Mhz with 64Mb of Ram, SB64, CL Blaster Banshee/Hansol 17' monitor - only thing unusual is my HD room 23 Gb). Everything seems to work quite well so far.
I believe it is based on FreeBSD - its certainly Unixlike in its file system. While everything is basically GUI, you can go to the command line. Looks like a nice marriage of robust structure and design (Unix) with a great GUI front end (Mac).
Its biggest problem is simply lack of Apps. If Adobe ported Photoshop and Macromedia ported Director, and someone ported some Sound software like SoundForge this OS would be rocking. All it needs is the right software and a little popular support. I imagine most people have never heard of it, let alone seen it. Hopefully the Free-for-Non-Commercial use Version 5 will let people have a taste of it and get it more widely advertised. If Be ever decides to make this available under the GPL it will be a real competitor to Linux for the desktop at least.
Its the first Unix like OS I have seen that I *would* consider setting up for my Mother to use.
To be fair I should mention that I have not had all that much time to explore the OS and see what I think of it beyond first impressions, so I am sure I will find flaws (the browser doesn't support Java for instance AFAIK) when I do. However, first impressions are important, and Be is very impressive.
The only problem with this from the music publisher's perspective is the fact that there is no confirmation of ownership involved. By this I mean that all that is required for me to gain access to the latest Offspring CD is that I have one in my drive when I first run the software to gain access to it via MP3.com - so nothing prevents me from taking my 100+ CDs over to your place and letting you use them to get access to them. Then you come to my place with your 100+ CDs and I get access to your CD collection. You could form "lending clubs" that brought together many CD owners to build a library of several thousand CDs and let everyone have access to them. Alternatively, I could set up an account and 20 of us could all input our collection to the same account building a huge collection and then we simply share the account.
Its no wonder the music industry is upset at this - it threatens their existence if it continues as a trend. Basically they will be reduced to an industry of recording studios which produce the master recordings, distribution will be free of charge to most people, with only small percentage actually buying the CDs.
This may be just the thing to put the profits back in the hands of the musicians though - something long overdue IMHO. I hate middlemen generally.
In a nutshell - CS rocks! I can honestly say I think it is the best online gaming experience I have ever had. They are still working on improvements and changes, but it only gets better.
If I presume to you mean "Rogue Spear" then I would agree. Its a great game online, but the offline planning phase is frustrating to me. I prefer the improvised planning of CS (ie watch where the other go and either go along or find your own way).
I find just staying alive in CS enough of a challenge. Can't beat that automatic shotgun in a closed environment though.
OppFor and CS are occupying an increasing amount of my free time (such as it is), and are major factors in why my home box even *has* a Win98 partition rather than being exclusively Linux. For those not familiar with Counter-Strike it is a mod for Halflife that pits Terrorists against Anti-Terrorist forces - and it is very addicting.
Since Halflife was pretty much everyone's Game of the Year out there I would like to see it moved to Linux.
(Of course I will look the complete nimrod if in fact it already has been made available in a Linux version - but to the best of my knowledge it has not).
What is needed here is a good open source UI initiative, bringing together the Academics who are knowedgeable in UI Design in our community and the developers in our community who are working on GUI Design, to start generating a logical, innovative, and consistent design to be implemented throughout GUI software under linux. Sort of a GUI Standards Association to set guidelines on development that would define a consistent interface and methodology of use. Conforming to it would have to be completely voluntary of course, but it might be of great use to future developers to have a body of code already built to perform all of the basic functions that they can draw upon when developing a new program.
Obviously, this will not impact the currently developed non-GUI programs which are already using their own command systems - I am sure if anyone were to suggest monkeying with the commands which control Emacs or VI there would be riots in the streets and public hangings - religous people can often be quite fanatical about change:)
Reaching a consensus on GUI design would no doubt prove to be a challenging task - but I am sure we have folks in the community who are both knowledgeable concerning UI design, and capable of approaching the task from a fresh perspective. A lot of research has already been done on this in the Academic world - all we need are folks to actively interpret that work into something comprehensible by developers.:)
I would be very upset and very happy if they released a PHP-version of/. - I am currently in the process of programming my own site (modelled in part on/.) using PHP. If the current release were executed in PHP I would have release from my programming woes (setting up and managing the messaging system) and new woes - incorporating in those elements that I have already created.
Honestly, I was stunned by the cleverness of the Slashdot design the first time I saw it. I have learned more about PHP through trying to recreate those elements I like myself than I ever would have learned by simply configuring it to work. By programming it myself, using PHP, I have not only become very comfortable in PHP but I am building a far better site as a result. Originally my site was a directory of websites with an attached message board (which saw too little use) - now it will become a more tightly integrated combination of both. The directory portion - with attendant management tools on the Admin side - is complete, the remaining elements focus on the most difficult section - the messaging and topic creation system.
Once I have a fully functional website with the minimum of required elements in place then I can begin to study how the moderation system, and other elements of Slashdot work.
It would probably be far quicker for me to simply download 0.9 and configure it for my purposes (and it may come to that) but I am so far very happy with the performance and ease of learning/use of PHP.
For anyone not already versed in perl (and even then) I would urge them to explore PHP if they are engaging in dynamic website design.
Sorry I can't place a link to my site but its not ready for viewing yet - it looks pretty and some portions work but there are major holes in it. I think I will be ready to unveil it as beta inside of a month or so with luck.
"I think that one of the improvements we're going to see in games is more video, not CGI but actual video shots in video games."
I think this would be a major step backwards. What I expect to see is better AI/Storyline management, combined with better graphic rendering which will produce dynamic stories in which the characters act and react realistically (but still programmatically) to situations and conversations. As graphic quality improves the ability of a character to appear realistic, combined with more available computing power and better character AI should be capable of producing a game in which characters look, act, and respond to the events in the story in a believable manner. I think that switching from dynamic game mode to static video playback mode based on events in a story is simply far too limiting and ultimately not cost effective - since someone has to film and act out all of those video clips. It also limits the gameplay, since only a limited number of options are possible in the story, or the number of video clips which need to be filmed quickly go astronomical.
Creating game characters that interact more believably, while programmatically very difficult, will in the end produce games which are more dynamic, less predictable, and by consistently staying in game graphics mode, more believable. If this can be combined with any sort of learning algorithm down the road, we may even have characters whose AI permits them to react in ways that make sense and really challenge the player.
Of course, writing the scripts for games like this will prove to be truly challenging. As a onetime script consultant/writer for a computer game (okay, so it was a kids title - "Anastasia - Adventures with Pooka and Bartok" if you are interested) I can attest that even a simple title requires an incredible amount of written dialog to cover all of the options. Since this dialog has to cover all possibilities, yet still have some useful content, it can be extremely difficult to create. Furthermore, just like any other element in a game, it is liable to be edited by higher ups (and even by the programmers who enter it) which can ruin the eventual result (Gee, just like the film industry). Writing for truly dynamic storylines will be a daunting task.
The one thing that the games industry needs to get straight IMHO, is that game development should be run more like the production of a major film, and less like disorganized-but-clever gaggle-fsck that seems to be the approach of many game companies (not the best ones I hope).
No one seems to be asking what MP3 gets out of this - and I think it must be pretty obvious, they get a huge database of musical preferences and demographic data that they can then assemble, and (probably) flog to other businesses. At the very least expect banner ads for *only* those bands that you like - or ones that others who own the same music as you - will show up.
In otherwords, to whatever degree, this is one more internet invasion of my privacy should I take advantage of it.
Of course, it is *so* open to abuse that I don't think it is a viable idea anyways.
There definitely is prior research on this concept. Google is nothing more than a reworking of the Hubs and Authorities concept discussed in the SA article. All they have done is settle on links and backlinks and surrounding text (the 50 characters on either side of the link I believe) as reliable sources of information.
Google simply reiterates the same principal while focusing on the authorities pages rather than the hubs as far as I can see.
Patenting an algorhythm is a rediculous concept and needs to be ended as a legal fiction. What would happen if Albert Einstein had patented his theories and formulas? Would every Nuclear powerplant in the world have to pay royalties to his estate?
An algorhythm is just a mathematical formula and should be available to everyone freely.
My vote goes for Tim Berners-Lee as the inventor of the web as first choice. No web - no Slashdot (no websites at all), no Linux (most of the collaboration that made Linux possible was done over the net), no Apache (since there would be no websites), and very likely no Open Source Movement (since exchanging those Open Source/ GPLed programs is somewhat difficult via BBS or the mail). And without Tim I would be currently without a job!
My second choice would be Linus Torvalds - since Time's Man of the Year (sic) is usually someone who had an impact THAT YEAR. Linux has come-into-its-own/received-the-bulk-of-its-hype this year even though its been around for a while previously.
Personally I think the whole Time MOTY thing is somewhat silly. So many people do extraordinary things in any one year that picking out one to laud is laughable.
In a recent interview Carmack said that he might start thinking about VRML, now that he is done QIII, since the current efforts "look like a joke"(my paraphrase of his words) if you have seen 3D gaming. Maybe this is simply the first option on his part to help create a better 3D environment.
Certainly anything based on the Quake model would make a good start for a more realistic VRML technology.
There was an old saying: "No one ever got fired for choosing IBM" - meaning that at the time IBM was considered so rock solid a company that its products *were* the standard, and regardless of cost no boss would challenge that sort of recommendation.
Well, I think that after a decade of propaganda in favour of MS products, exposure in University to same, etc, everyone naturally accepts (present company excepted in most cases I am sure) that MS products are entirely acceptable without a challenge.
The worst thing is the fact that in some cases they seem to have had licenses for WordPerfect and *still* switched to MS office.
From the cost perspective, we ought to insist, as citizens that offices consider a combination of some form of Linux plus Star Office - or at least the later on Windows since their systems probably already have it installed. SO is at least completely free and MS document compatible as far as I know. Since its free it ought to save the Government *millions* of dollars and at the same time not require them to also purchase hardware upgrades. The savings would be astronomical.
The only problem with switching government employees over to Linux would be the additional retraining costs for the new OS - which would not be trivial I am sure. Linux is *still* not as easy to use on the desktop as MS Win95/98 - although great strides are being taken.
Slashdot Mirror
That's my point, if Topclick is receiving my search terms, sending them to google, getting the results and displaying them to me, they have the opportunity to analyze and record the HREF's vs the Search strings and all that data without too much difficulty. When you do a search on topclick it returns results from google with the topclick banner on the top of the page - so it is filtering the results that are returned.
I don't know anything about the SEC filing, but if they are running software to ensure that all searches are relayed through their server before being submitted to Google, and then routed back to the user - ie proxying the search so to speak - then it would be a relatively small matter to record the search strings being relayed in a database and index them to determine which are most commonly used.
Since the site is apparently running PHP amongst other things, this could be little more than an elaborate PHP script and a Mysql database. I could figure out something comparable with no more than a few hours to experiment.
Just a thought, but they have said elsewhere that they have a product they plan to announce in the future. The search site is merely part of the package. From the name "TopClick" I would assume that while they will not be tracking any personal information, they *will* be tracking the number of clicks made on each URL in the database. Presumably they plan to capitalize on this information somehow. Tracking queries in this manner ought to be fairly straightforward, but if the site gets lots of usage, they can combine the google info on best sources of information with the topclick info on most popular destinations to derrive information they can sell somehow - presumably to advertisers.
All the while completely preserving the anonymity of their users while they search. Not a bad tradeoff if they don't abuse it in any way.
They have a specific product (presumably privacy related I assume) that they will be announcing shortly. I don't know anything more than that, but the search service is an inducement to use their site but its not their main product.
Mind you I support the idea of perserving internet anonymity whereever possible. Plus its nice to see a large scale and promising site use PHP!
Actually there is work being done on the Interplanetary Network Protocol (IPN) at this time. There is an article on it here and here (and yes, we suggested this story to Rob and the boys and got turned down for some reason). Its quite a fascinating task to tackle.
Disclaimer: I work for spaceref.com just so you know...
I mean its nice to see someone admit it publically, but it comes as no suprise to me that the US intelligence community works for the benefit of US corporations - US politicians work for the benefit of US corporations as well since thats who pays for them. It takes so much cash to be elected in a modern democracy that only those with the good corporate connections can *afford* to get elected. Do you think those corporations fund candidates solely out of the kindness of their hearts?
True democracy is a myth these days. We are governed by those with the money to buy the politicians their offices. I think anyone who truly believes otherwise is living in a dream world.
(Mind you there are some exceptions, Switzerland seems to have a good democratic system from what I have read).
"Seeing basic rights disposed of in such a cavalier manner for the sake of convenience"
And is this sort of treatment the thing you want to display to your kids where the right to free speech is concerned. "Yeah, kid its important, thats why its in the Constitution - now shut up and stop trying to tell me its important you read about censorship on the peacefire.org website. I am your Parent, I tell you what you can say or do, remember that"
I don't think so...
It is obviously due to the fact that to the US, US Law supercedes all other laws, and they have the economic and military might to shove their decisions down the throats of anyone who disagrees. For some incomprehensible reason, the Canadian Government and legal system just goes along with any decision made in the states and never has the balls to challenge them. I can only assume our government is the best that money can buy - and was bought with US dollars.
The US Empire is only beginning to flex its muscles....
According to my calculations:
10000 != (4478 + 2153 + 700 + 693 + 664)
These numbers total a mere 8688. What accounts for the missing 1312 stories? Duplicates? If so thats a horrible ratio....
Or am I suffering from caffeine withdrawl here (no coffee or tea in the house this morning)...
So if we return to using geographical components in the domain name system, are all the US companies going to start including .us on the end of their names?
It has long bothered me that because the internet was started in the US, the .com, .org and .net domain extensions are by assumption located in the US (even if this is no longer the case) and all other locations must use a national code in their domains (ie be marked as "foreigners" to the US).
This sort of US-centric thinking is really quite annoying and pervades modern western culture.
Wow, the quality and intelligence normally found in many posts on /. seems to have disappeared today leaving us with nothing but ignorant fucks who can barely form a sentance, let alone actually post a question for Jon Katz. If you don't like his writing, if you think he is wrong in his basic assumptions - THEN USE YOUR FUCKING BRAINS and post a question that challenges him to respond. Either than or shut the fuck up. Nothing is more irritating that reading the drek that appears on slashdot these days. I read practically this whole thread and only saw 1 question posted to JK out of perhaps 60 replies. How fucking pathetic.
If the responses that this thread has produced are indicative of Geekdom today, perhaps I want to reconsider my membership.
I for one am looking forward to reading both the book and his replies to the questions asked here - then considering them and making up my own mind.
Now, here is my (lame) question for JK: "Given that the publishing industry has historically not "gotten it" - did you have any trouble finding a publisher to publish this book?"
Okay, I installed BeOS 4.5 on my home system (it now triple boots between Win98/Linux/Be). It installed flawlessly, recognized my hardware properly, I simply had to choose a few options and fill in my internet settings. Up and running in under 20 minutes flat.
It works beautifully. I had heard it performed well with animations, multimedia etc, so I opened up 4 animated pictures, and played a music CD without a single glitch (and this is on a fairly typical system: AMD K2-6 400 Mhz with 64Mb of Ram, SB64, CL Blaster Banshee/Hansol 17' monitor - only thing unusual is my HD room 23 Gb). Everything seems to work quite well so far.
I believe it is based on FreeBSD - its certainly Unixlike in its file system. While everything is basically GUI, you can go to the command line. Looks like a nice marriage of robust structure and design (Unix) with a great GUI front end (Mac).
Its biggest problem is simply lack of Apps. If Adobe ported Photoshop and Macromedia ported Director, and someone ported some Sound software like SoundForge this OS would be rocking. All it needs is the right software and a little popular support. I imagine most people have never heard of it, let alone seen it. Hopefully the Free-for-Non-Commercial use Version 5 will let people have a taste of it and get it more widely advertised. If Be ever decides to make this available under the GPL it will be a real competitor to Linux for the desktop at least.
Its the first Unix like OS I have seen that I *would* consider setting up for my Mother to use.
To be fair I should mention that I have not had all that much time to explore the OS and see what I think of it beyond first impressions, so I am sure I will find flaws (the browser doesn't support Java for instance AFAIK) when I do. However, first impressions are important, and Be is very impressive.
The only problem with this from the music publisher's perspective is the fact that there is no confirmation of ownership involved. By this I mean that all that is required for me to gain access to the latest Offspring CD is that I have one in my drive when I first run the software to gain access to it via MP3.com - so nothing prevents me from taking my 100+ CDs over to your place and letting you use them to get access to them. Then you come to my place with your 100+ CDs and I get access to your CD collection. You could form "lending clubs" that brought together many CD owners to build a library of several thousand CDs and let everyone have access to them. Alternatively, I could set up an account and 20 of us could all input our collection to the same account building a huge collection and then we simply share the account.
Its no wonder the music industry is upset at this - it threatens their existence if it continues as a trend. Basically they will be reduced to an industry of recording studios which produce the master recordings, distribution will be free of charge to most people, with only small percentage actually buying the CDs.
This may be just the thing to put the profits back in the hands of the musicians though - something long overdue IMHO. I hate middlemen generally.
Just my $0.04 Cdn
In a nutshell - CS rocks! I can honestly say I think it is the best online gaming experience I have ever had. They are still working on improvements and changes, but it only gets better.
If I presume to you mean "Rogue Spear" then I would agree. Its a great game online, but the offline planning phase is frustrating to me. I prefer the improvised planning of CS (ie watch where the other go and either go along or find your own way).
I find just staying alive in CS enough of a challenge. Can't beat that automatic shotgun in a closed environment though.
OppFor and CS are occupying an increasing amount of my free time (such as it is), and are major factors in why my home box even *has* a Win98 partition rather than being exclusively Linux. For those not familiar with Counter-Strike it is a mod for Halflife that pits Terrorists against Anti-Terrorist forces - and it is very addicting.
Since Halflife was pretty much everyone's Game of the Year out there I would like to see it moved to Linux.
(Of course I will look the complete nimrod if in fact it already has been made available in a Linux version - but to the best of my knowledge it has not).
What is needed here is a good open source UI initiative, bringing together the Academics who are knowedgeable in UI Design in our community and the developers in our community who are working on GUI Design, to start generating a logical, innovative, and consistent design to be implemented throughout GUI software under linux. Sort of a GUI Standards Association to set guidelines on development that would define a consistent interface and methodology of use. Conforming to it would have to be completely voluntary of course, but it might be of great use to future developers to have a body of code already built to perform all of the basic functions that they can draw upon when developing a new program.
Obviously, this will not impact the currently developed non-GUI programs which are already using their own command systems - I am sure if anyone were to suggest monkeying with the commands which control Emacs or VI there would be riots in the streets and public hangings - religous people can often be quite fanatical about change :)
Reaching a consensus on GUI design would no doubt prove to be a challenging task - but I am sure we have folks in the community who are both knowledgeable concerning UI design, and capable of approaching the task from a fresh perspective. A lot of research has already been done on this in the Academic world - all we need are folks to actively interpret that work into something comprehensible by developers. :)
Just my 2 cents worth.
Well, yes he did actually, since Zend is incorporated into PHP4.
I would be very upset and very happy if they released a PHP-version of /. - I am currently in the process of programming my own site (modelled in part on /.) using PHP. If the current release were executed in PHP I would have release from my programming woes (setting up and managing the messaging system) and new woes - incorporating in those elements that I have already created.
Honestly, I was stunned by the cleverness of the Slashdot design the first time I saw it. I have learned more about PHP through trying to recreate those elements I like myself than I ever would have learned by simply configuring it to work. By programming it myself, using PHP, I have not only become very comfortable in PHP but I am building a far better site as a result. Originally my site was a directory of websites with an attached message board (which saw too little use) - now it will become a more tightly integrated combination of both. The directory portion - with attendant management tools on the Admin side - is complete, the remaining elements focus on the most difficult section - the messaging and topic creation system.
Once I have a fully functional website with the minimum of required elements in place then I can begin to study how the moderation system, and other elements of Slashdot work.
It would probably be far quicker for me to simply download 0.9 and configure it for my purposes (and it may come to that) but I am so far very happy with the performance and ease of learning/use of PHP.
For anyone not already versed in perl (and even then) I would urge them to explore PHP if they are engaging in dynamic website design.
Sorry I can't place a link to my site but its not ready for viewing yet - it looks pretty and some portions work but there are major holes in it. I think I will be ready to unveil it as beta inside of a month or so with luck.
"I think that one of the improvements we're going to see in games is more video, not CGI but actual video shots in video games."
I think this would be a major step backwards. What I expect to see is better AI/Storyline management, combined with better graphic rendering which will produce dynamic stories in which the characters act and react realistically (but still programmatically) to situations and conversations. As graphic quality improves the ability of a character to appear realistic, combined with more available computing power and better character AI should be capable of producing a game in which characters look, act, and respond to the events in the story in a believable manner. I think that switching from dynamic game mode to static video playback mode based on events in a story is simply far too limiting and ultimately not cost effective - since someone has to film and act out all of those video clips. It also limits the gameplay, since only a limited number of options are possible in the story, or the number of video clips which need to be filmed quickly go astronomical.
Creating game characters that interact more believably, while programmatically very difficult, will in the end produce games which are more dynamic, less predictable, and by consistently staying in game graphics mode, more believable. If this can be combined with any sort of learning algorithm down the road, we may even have characters whose AI permits them to react in ways that make sense and really challenge the player.
Of course, writing the scripts for games like this will prove to be truly challenging. As a onetime script consultant/writer for a computer game (okay, so it was a kids title - "Anastasia - Adventures with Pooka and Bartok" if you are interested) I can attest that even a simple title requires an incredible amount of written dialog to cover all of the options. Since this dialog has to cover all possibilities, yet still have some useful content, it can be extremely difficult to create. Furthermore, just like any other element in a game, it is liable to be edited by higher ups (and even by the programmers who enter it) which can ruin the eventual result (Gee, just like the film industry). Writing for truly dynamic storylines will be a daunting task.
The one thing that the games industry needs to get straight IMHO, is that game development should be run more like the production of a major film, and less like disorganized-but-clever gaggle-fsck that seems to be the approach of many game companies (not the best ones I hope).
Anyways, just my $0.2 worth
No one seems to be asking what MP3 gets out of this - and I think it must be pretty obvious, they get a huge database of musical preferences and demographic data that they can then assemble, and (probably) flog to other businesses. At the very least expect banner ads for *only* those bands that you like - or ones that others who own the same music as you - will show up.
In otherwords, to whatever degree, this is one more internet invasion of my privacy should I take advantage of it.
Of course, it is *so* open to abuse that I don't think it is a viable idea anyways.
There definitely is prior research on this concept. Google is nothing more than a reworking of the Hubs and Authorities concept discussed in the SA article. All they have done is settle on links and backlinks and surrounding text (the 50 characters on either side of the link I believe) as reliable sources of information.
Google simply reiterates the same principal while focusing on the authorities pages rather than the hubs as far as I can see.
Patenting an algorhythm is a rediculous concept and needs to be ended as a legal fiction. What would happen if Albert Einstein had patented his theories and formulas? Would every Nuclear powerplant in the world have to pay royalties to his estate?
An algorhythm is just a mathematical formula and should be available to everyone freely.
My vote goes for Tim Berners-Lee as the inventor of the web as first choice. No web - no Slashdot (no websites at all), no Linux (most of the collaboration that made Linux possible was done over the net), no Apache (since there would be no websites), and very likely no Open Source Movement (since exchanging those Open Source/ GPLed programs is somewhat difficult via BBS or the mail). And without Tim I would be currently without a job!
My second choice would be Linus Torvalds - since Time's Man of the Year (sic) is usually someone who had an impact THAT YEAR. Linux has come-into-its-own/received-the-bulk-of-its-hype this year even though its been around for a while previously.
Personally I think the whole Time MOTY thing is somewhat silly. So many people do extraordinary things in any one year that picking out one to laud is laughable.
In a recent interview Carmack said that he might start thinking about VRML, now that he is done QIII, since the current efforts "look like a joke"(my paraphrase of his words) if you have seen 3D gaming. Maybe this is simply the first option on his part to help create a better 3D environment.
Certainly anything based on the Quake model would make a good start for a more realistic VRML technology.
There was an old saying: "No one ever got fired for choosing IBM" - meaning that at the time IBM was considered so rock solid a company that its products *were* the standard, and regardless of cost no boss would challenge that sort of recommendation.
Well, I think that after a decade of propaganda in favour of MS products, exposure in University to same, etc, everyone naturally accepts (present company excepted in most cases I am sure) that MS products are entirely acceptable without a challenge.
The worst thing is the fact that in some cases they seem to have had licenses for WordPerfect and *still* switched to MS office.
From the cost perspective, we ought to insist, as citizens that offices consider a combination of some form of Linux plus Star Office - or at least the later on Windows since their systems probably already have it installed. SO is at least completely free and MS document compatible as far as I know. Since its free it ought to save the Government *millions* of dollars and at the same time not require them to also purchase hardware upgrades. The savings would be astronomical.
The only problem with switching government employees over to Linux would be the additional retraining costs for the new OS - which would not be trivial I am sure. Linux is *still* not as easy to use on the desktop as MS Win95/98 - although great strides are being taken.
My .06 cents (Cdn)