thanks for the link. Of course, if you click on the next column over, that is max, you'll see that the "50% drop" not only all occurred in the year 2000, but it was preceded by a 200% gain in the year 1999. So basically, the stock's been stuck at 1999 levels. Apple likewise saw a similar bubble in 1999-2000, and their "profit" is entirely based on performance in the last year; performance based in large part on their performance in the music sector. I predict a massive plunge in AAPL's stock price when their customer base realizes that iTunes has nothing to do with the Ed Sullivan show, John Lennon is dead, and the junk Creative makes cost less.
skimmed that little tri-bit article. Since the critique hinges in part on poor copy-editing involved, I'll permit myself to add some some commentary on the tri-bit evaluation:
per se is latin (being a literal translation of the Aristotelian kath'auto), and thus has no sharp accent on the last word. The only case I can think of where you'd use per sé instead of per se is if you were writing in Italian.
The Bard's Tale was released several years after Wizardry. I'm also fairly sure that Wizardry II beelongs to the early 80s.
I found this conclusion amusing:
God, but do I hate reviewers which fail to understand their place in the machine. Between your knowledge of gaming, your insight into future approaches to gaming, your wisdom regarding development, and the near Strunkian quality of writing herein, I tend to wonder how the hell you got your job.
Since the critique counts grammatical and stylistic errors, I figgered a little tu quoque was in order:
First sentence:
which fail: should be "who fail"
Second sentence:
between: is used to indicate relationship of among two elements, not four, as used here.
you: the tone has shifted from referring to the reviewer in the third person to referring to him in the second person.
near Strunkian quality: undoubtedly you're a big fan of Strunk and White. If you consult them on this matter, you'll find that when you have one adjective modify another in a noun phrase, you need to hyphenate, viz.: near-Strunkian
herein: this is both archaic and incorrect. "herein" in this context refers to the tri-bit critique of the article, and not the article itself.
tend to wonder: cf. Strunk and White: "OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS". "I wonder" is fine.
In general though, the tri-bit critique pretty much points out what's obvious in the original article, namely:
A. The author has a poor understanding of the past.
B. The author doesn't grasp the present reality.
C. The author offers sweeping, self-indulgent hopes for the future.
D. Software developers will find little of interest here. You want real world physics, and photorealistic art, and style, and all the sweet angles and dialog of cutscenes, only completely dynamic, and AI that's as smart as humans?
I want to live in a sea of pearls. BFD.
Every text can benefit from critical thinking. You can see in the examples here people bringing up bad reviews ("this game sucked") without saying why ("this third-rate Mario clone has three screens, insipid music that consists of 8 notes played over and over, and several crash bugs"). Any text that requires critical thinking for the reader to grasp its literal meaning is opaque.
This article poses a false dichotomy, viz., "Either you can uncritically accept a stupid numerical rating system and a formula or you can study some masturbatory prose that tries to capture the cognitive experience of playing the game from the perspective of a 17-year-old male virgin."
How about this: it's a video game review. It's not high literature. People read video game reviews for one primary purpose: to find out about the game being reviewed, usually to assist in making a purchase decision. So, sure, the numbers and scoring categories like graphics, sound, and interoperability with USB-powered marital aids are all beside the point: we want to know how the elements contribute to the overall experience, not whether we can feel every hair on that bearskin rug. But, at the same time, we expect something usable, which means operating with a consideration to the conventions of the genre: subvert them if you must, but don't feed me crap and tell me it's high literature.
In the end, a good review provides a vivid description of the merits and defects of the piece, along with enough information (usually implied) about the reviewer's aesthetic background so we can determine how much we share with the reviewers aesthetic criteria.
Excellent idea. I can't wait to check out what's on my brand new fancy multi-wave-length self-programming TV:
PENIS ENLARGEMENT PILLS!!! VIOXXXX!!! GET YOURS!!!!
*click* Get your presc@ription filled in seconds! 5 *click*
Make money at home! not a scam! *click* Singles Wanted! *click* attachments *click* *click*
In all fairness, it'd probably be better than the series premier of The Will.
You have a celphone with a Digital Camera, GPS, a 3D motion sensor, Bluetooth, a two-way radio, and a processor to handle all this plus some dumb games.
That's just some shielding and fancy coding away from a guidance system, with optical target recognition, GPS, a backup Inertial Navigation System for areas where GPS is not available, celestial navigation system (just roll the camera over), and short- and medium- range radios. Put two on a drone and you'll get basic flight instruments as well.
Now UAVs, Cruise Missiles, and Drug-smuggling drones are in the hands of anyone with a Verizon subscription!
Actually, yeah I do. And I'd like some of that budget sent my way, please. The gap between video games, recruitment tools and training tools is narrowing. Expect the next generation of "America's Army" class games to come in pure vid, recruitment and training variants.
In such an environment, you need to secure the code, or the game is worthless for any of these applications.
Naturally, shipping the aimbot crowd to one of the world's favorite war zones is an ideal solution.
Didn't you read the part of the EULA that said:
The licensee agrees that any violation of this EULA or the AA TOS constitutes a request to the Secretary of the Army for immediate enlistment and deployment to a combat zone. Should, in the judgment of the Army, the licensee's age, nationality or physical condition render the licensee incapable of active duty, the licensee will be granted immediate and mandatory employment with one of the Army's Civilian Contractors for Peace(tm) at the going international rate for janitorial staff (currently $200/month).
Anyway, always nice to see sabre rattling from the army. Wake me when the firing squad shows up.
Come on, "Virtual Beauty Pageant" as a TV show concept will go far. Imagine what you'll see:
Talent Competition: Ever see a huge-breasted male fantasy dazzle a national TV audience with her ability to recite the first book of the Aeneid from memory with perfect meter? Now you will.
Virtual vaseline on virtual teeth.
Commercials from Dow Chemical, padded bra manufacturers and Chiropracters!
Why don't they just get it over with and have the Boob Network? Oh wait, they already do. Oh crap, and they've already done the favorite biologically impossible female video game star thing. Ah double crap.
You know, not every offering on their schedule need conjure images of maladjusted 15-year-olds with joysticks in hand.
It's to protect an ongoing investigation, not necessarily the one into the breach. If he's kept working for the SS on sensitive matters in which the T-Online intrusion story could be argued to compromise such an investigation, well, wouldn't that count too? Hmm, come to think of it, if I were Deutsche Telekom, I'd dearly want that to be the case.
Well, just because he got into T-Mobile's system doesn't mean he has a lot of friends. Sure, most young males engaged in such activities are giants of men, with beautiful girls on each arm, and the social ease of a High Commissioner after a second martini, but they're not all so smooth. Heck, he was probably overwhelmed by the fact that the Secret Service took an interest in him, and, seeing photographic evidence that the rumors of those wild "protect the currency" parties were true, figured this was a better shot at a real job than a scattershot "to whom it may concern" resume mentioning everything but the name of the nun who kicked him out for one too many links to the xmas islands on the high school web page.
Okay, so as near as I can figure out, this is a white paper because:
It describes a new format.SIF as basically being having everything a jpg does except higher compression.
Some might think it's a press release, since the "White Paper"'s discussion of the new format is largely limited to the benefits "OEMs" will have in using this (soon-to-be patented) technology, and explaining how it integrates into Allume's fine line of existence and future Digital Lifestyle(tm) products.
Some might further argue that often press releases will accompany white papers, explain the point for the consuming world, and link to the paper; this "white paper" seems to do exactly that: we are invited to examine a (currently 404'd) page to see the actual data involved.
To those who think it's a press release, it's not, because:
It don't say "For Immediate Release"
Press releases are proofread for grammatical errors, and working links capable of withstanding slashdot-class bandwidth
And by the way, they don't have a chance. Sure, bandwidth cost means a lot, but for the OEM who might consider adopting this technology, it means a new standard that offers at best 30% improvement (on those little 50kb jpegs we're asked to believe), paying for it, and passing the cost on to the consumer. It may be an improvement, but if you really want to improve your image-heavy website's bandwidth usage, switch to Fractal Image Format. Not only do you reduce the size of the images; you reduce the number of people downloading them. The same for.sif : bandwidth savings will actually be on the order of 98% (30% image size reduction, 97% website traffic savings).
I understand if you order 4 gigs of that, a neon case light, a backlit keyboard, and a digital readout cooling fan display you get a free copy of "2Fast 2Furious" and the opportunity to appear on the hit new reality show "Who would want to date an IT Redneck?"
Don't forget GPS, electric typewriters, electric toothbrushes, space-age polymers, bicycle protective gear, the camera-stylo, the "you must be at least this tall" sign at amusement parks, flexicuffs, any number of gadgets and machines the proper use of which I cannot even imagine, and reality tv.
I'm looking forward to multiple commentary tracks, from the producer/director and the actors.
"This montage here is homage to Eisenstein's battle on the frozen lake in Alexander Nevsky, and the backdoor finale evokes the Teutonic Knights' flight from camp"; "That one line, 'any of you girls order a pizza?' took me fifteen takes, and it just didn't seem right. Then Bob took me aside and said to just give it my all, and *wham* I nailed it".
Heh. Well, yeah, that pretty much sums up my youth, but:
it's a bit of a red herring to hold up HL2 and Doom3 as models of innovation. They're certainly examples of how the hardware industry is driving games, though. Heck, I've got somewhere around here a card for a free copy of HL2. Does that mean that, if code is free, hardware should be free too?
What about all those people who saw the HL2 source code? Did it help them become better hackers? What kind of educational value did that have?
The number of good games that come through modifications of other's code is fairly small. After a few "training wheel" examples, most folks I know are more comfortable writing their stuff from scratch. It makes debugging a hell of a lot more fun.
The patronage business model is great, only we need a helluva lot more patrons.
Legislate free software into and out of existence?
on
Being Free is Hard to Do
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Sure, we can all debate the relative merits of GIMP and Photoshop's interfaces, the joys of flash and brew, but the article points why the current environment is unfavorable to free software. It's not so much that commercial software is superior; rather, the freedoms are, in the current environment, irrelevant. Free software only becomes viable when all users are forced to pay for commercial software; that is, when those freedoms (or at least the first three) are enforced across the board.
Sticking with the photoshop example, I'm sure there are tons of semi-legitimate and pirated copies of photoshop sitting on people's computers doing relatively simple tasks that could be done just as easily as with GIMP. Let's say Adobe finds a way to shut down all those non-revenue-generating copies. What happens? Maybe Adobe will see a little more revenue. More likely, the the user base of GIMP will increase one hundred fold. Suddenly those freedoms are more than hollow idealism in a pragmatic world, but actually mean something. More users mean more development. Then your Open Source Worker's Paradise is fast becoming a reality....and that's when Microsoft forms a coalition with software publishers to build in a costly DRM system that requires every software product to be encrypted to an individual machine in order to work.
What do you want to pay today?
Slashdot Mirror
thanks for the link. Of course, if you click on the next column over, that is max, you'll see that the "50% drop" not only all occurred in the year 2000, but it was preceded by a 200% gain in the year 1999. So basically, the stock's been stuck at 1999 levels. Apple likewise saw a similar bubble in 1999-2000, and their "profit" is entirely based on performance in the last year; performance based in large part on their performance in the music sector. I predict a massive plunge in AAPL's stock price when their customer base realizes that iTunes has nothing to do with the Ed Sullivan show, John Lennon is dead, and the junk Creative makes cost less.
per se is latin (being a literal translation of the Aristotelian kath'auto), and thus has no sharp accent on the last word. The only case I can think of where you'd use per sé instead of per se is if you were writing in Italian.
The Bard's Tale was released several years after Wizardry. I'm also fairly sure that Wizardry II beelongs to the early 80s.
I found this conclusion amusing:
Since the critique counts grammatical and stylistic errors, I figgered a little tu quoque was in order:
First sentence:
which fail: should be "who fail"
Second sentence:
between: is used to indicate relationship of among two elements, not four, as used here.
you: the tone has shifted from referring to the reviewer in the third person to referring to him in the second person.
near Strunkian quality: undoubtedly you're a big fan of Strunk and White. If you consult them on this matter, you'll find that when you have one adjective modify another in a noun phrase, you need to hyphenate, viz.: near-Strunkian
herein: this is both archaic and incorrect. "herein" in this context refers to the tri-bit critique of the article, and not the article itself.
tend to wonder: cf. Strunk and White: "OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS". "I wonder" is fine.
In general though, the tri-bit critique pretty much points out what's obvious in the original article, namely:
A. The author has a poor understanding of the past.
B. The author doesn't grasp the present reality.
C. The author offers sweeping, self-indulgent hopes for the future.
D. Software developers will find little of interest here. You want real world physics, and photorealistic art, and style, and all the sweet angles and dialog of cutscenes, only completely dynamic, and AI that's as smart as humans?
I want to live in a sea of pearls. BFD.
Every text can benefit from critical thinking. You can see in the examples here people bringing up bad reviews ("this game sucked") without saying why ("this third-rate Mario clone has three screens, insipid music that consists of 8 notes played over and over, and several crash bugs"). Any text that requires critical thinking for the reader to grasp its literal meaning is opaque.
This article poses a false dichotomy, viz., "Either you can uncritically accept a stupid numerical rating system and a formula or you can study some masturbatory prose that tries to capture the cognitive experience of playing the game from the perspective of a 17-year-old male virgin."
How about this: it's a video game review. It's not high literature. People read video game reviews for one primary purpose: to find out about the game being reviewed, usually to assist in making a purchase decision. So, sure, the numbers and scoring categories like graphics, sound, and interoperability with USB-powered marital aids are all beside the point: we want to know how the elements contribute to the overall experience, not whether we can feel every hair on that bearskin rug. But, at the same time, we expect something usable, which means operating with a consideration to the conventions of the genre: subvert them if you must, but don't feed me crap and tell me it's high literature.
In the end, a good review provides a vivid description of the merits and defects of the piece, along with enough information (usually implied) about the reviewer's aesthetic background so we can determine how much we share with the reviewers aesthetic criteria.
Excellent idea. I can't wait to check out what's on my brand new fancy multi-wave-length self-programming TV:
PENIS ENLARGEMENT PILLS!!! VIOXXXX!!! GET YOURS!!!!
*click*
Get your presc@ription filled in seconds! 5
*click*
Make money at home! not a scam!
*click*
Singles Wanted!
*click*
attachments
*click*
*click*
In all fairness, it'd probably be better than the series premier of The Will.
You have a celphone with a Digital Camera, GPS, a 3D motion sensor, Bluetooth, a two-way radio, and a processor to handle all this plus some dumb games. That's just some shielding and fancy coding away from a guidance system, with optical target recognition, GPS, a backup Inertial Navigation System for areas where GPS is not available, celestial navigation system (just roll the camera over), and short- and medium- range radios. Put two on a drone and you'll get basic flight instruments as well. Now UAVs, Cruise Missiles, and Drug-smuggling drones are in the hands of anyone with a Verizon subscription!
But will it be intuitive enough to know when to play Barry White and when instead to cue the Pet Shop Boys?
In such an environment, you need to secure the code, or the game is worthless for any of these applications.
Naturally, shipping the aimbot crowd to one of the world's favorite war zones is an ideal solution. Didn't you read the part of the EULA that said:
Anyway, always nice to see sabre rattling from the army. Wake me when the firing squad shows up.
Come on, "Virtual Beauty Pageant" as a TV show concept will go far. Imagine what you'll see:
Talent Competition: Ever see a huge-breasted male fantasy dazzle a national TV audience with her ability to recite the first book of the Aeneid from memory with perfect meter? Now you will.
Virtual vaseline on virtual teeth.
Commercials from Dow Chemical, padded bra manufacturers and Chiropracters!
Why don't they just get it over with and have the Boob Network? Oh wait, they already do. Oh crap, and they've already done the favorite biologically impossible female video game star thing. Ah double crap.
You know, not every offering on their schedule need conjure images of maladjusted 15-year-olds with joysticks in hand.
It's to protect an ongoing investigation, not necessarily the one into the breach. If he's kept working for the SS on sensitive matters in which the T-Online intrusion story could be argued to compromise such an investigation, well, wouldn't that count too? Hmm, come to think of it, if I were Deutsche Telekom, I'd dearly want that to be the case.
Well, just because he got into T-Mobile's system doesn't mean he has a lot of friends. Sure, most young males engaged in such activities are giants of men, with beautiful girls on each arm, and the social ease of a High Commissioner after a second martini, but they're not all so smooth. Heck, he was probably overwhelmed by the fact that the Secret Service took an interest in him, and, seeing photographic evidence that the rumors of those wild "protect the currency" parties were true, figured this was a better shot at a real job than a scattershot "to whom it may concern" resume mentioning everything but the name of the nun who kicked him out for one too many links to the xmas islands on the high school web page.
Okay, so as near as I can figure out, this is a white paper because: .SIF as basically being having everything a jpg does except higher compression.
.sif : bandwidth savings will actually be on the order of 98% (30% image size reduction, 97% website traffic savings).
It describes a new format
Some might think it's a press release, since the "White Paper"'s discussion of the new format is largely limited to the benefits "OEMs" will have in using this (soon-to-be patented) technology, and explaining how it integrates into Allume's fine line of existence and future Digital Lifestyle(tm) products.
Some might further argue that often press releases will accompany white papers, explain the point for the consuming world, and link to the paper; this "white paper" seems to do exactly that: we are invited to examine a (currently 404'd) page to see the actual data involved.
To those who think it's a press release, it's not, because:
It don't say "For Immediate Release"
Press releases are proofread for grammatical errors, and working links capable of withstanding slashdot-class bandwidth
And by the way, they don't have a chance. Sure, bandwidth cost means a lot, but for the OEM who might consider adopting this technology, it means a new standard that offers at best 30% improvement (on those little 50kb jpegs we're asked to believe), paying for it, and passing the cost on to the consumer. It may be an improvement, but if you really want to improve your image-heavy website's bandwidth usage, switch to Fractal Image Format. Not only do you reduce the size of the images; you reduce the number of people downloading them. The same for
I understand if you order 4 gigs of that, a neon case light, a backlit keyboard, and a digital readout cooling fan display you get a free copy of "2Fast 2Furious" and the opportunity to appear on the hit new reality show "Who would want to date an IT Redneck?"
Don't forget GPS, electric typewriters, electric toothbrushes, space-age polymers, bicycle protective gear, the camera-stylo, the "you must be at least this tall" sign at amusement parks, flexicuffs, any number of gadgets and machines the proper use of which I cannot even imagine, and reality tv.
I'm looking forward to multiple commentary tracks, from the producer/director and the actors.
"This montage here is homage to Eisenstein's battle on the frozen lake in Alexander Nevsky, and the backdoor finale evokes the Teutonic Knights' flight from camp"; "That one line, 'any of you girls order a pizza?' took me fifteen takes, and it just didn't seem right. Then Bob took me aside and said to just give it my all, and *wham* I nailed it".
Heh. Well, yeah, that pretty much sums up my youth, but:
it's a bit of a red herring to hold up HL2 and Doom3 as models of innovation. They're certainly examples of how the hardware industry is driving games, though. Heck, I've got somewhere around here a card for a free copy of HL2. Does that mean that, if code is free, hardware should be free too?
What about all those people who saw the HL2 source code? Did it help them become better hackers? What kind of educational value did that have?
The number of good games that come through modifications of other's code is fairly small. After a few "training wheel" examples, most folks I know are more comfortable writing their stuff from scratch. It makes debugging a hell of a lot more fun.
The patronage business model is great, only we need a helluva lot more patrons.
Sure, we can all debate the relative merits of GIMP and Photoshop's interfaces, the joys of flash and brew, but the article points why the current environment is unfavorable to free software. It's not so much that commercial software is superior; rather, the freedoms are, in the current environment, irrelevant. Free software only becomes viable when all users are forced to pay for commercial software; that is, when those freedoms (or at least the first three) are enforced across the board. Sticking with the photoshop example, I'm sure there are tons of semi-legitimate and pirated copies of photoshop sitting on people's computers doing relatively simple tasks that could be done just as easily as with GIMP. Let's say Adobe finds a way to shut down all those non-revenue-generating copies. What happens? Maybe Adobe will see a little more revenue. More likely, the the user base of GIMP will increase one hundred fold. Suddenly those freedoms are more than hollow idealism in a pragmatic world, but actually mean something. More users mean more development. Then your Open Source Worker's Paradise is fast becoming a reality. ...and that's when Microsoft forms a coalition with software publishers to build in a costly DRM system that requires every software product to be encrypted to an individual machine in order to work.
What do you want to pay today?