Just stop with these promises of personal flight stories. It's been promised on a weekly basis since the Wright boys converted the bike shop, or maybe even the first Montgolfier balloon. You think the FAA is going to let it happen? The PILA? (Personal Injury Lawyer Army). Most people's inability to move safely in just one or two dimensions much less three? This will be a toy that some billionaire plays with before getting bored or cratering, and maybe the military will be interested for about a month.
I was lucked out and saw a kid playing it at Sears when it came out. A bunch of folks eventually gathered around, and the comments were along the lines of "Are they kidding with this?" The poor kid playing the demo kept falling into the damn holes.:-P He left and I tried it out. Wow. Was that ever pointless.
Then again I actually played the Atari 2600 version of Pac Man endlessly, so what do I know?;-)
These days I almost always rent before I buy. Gamefly is a godsend to me. It saved me from enough bad purchases last year to more than pay for the subscription fees through the end of this year. And their "keep it" prices are better than most used game prices online.
Movies bred by genetic algorithms. Everything will be allowed to evolve: the actors, the script, the story, everything!
Successful films could be put out to stud.
The fitness of each generation will be determined by focus groups.
So we'll still have "Saw XXXVI" and "Big Momma's House 29" and "Terminator: What The Fuck Were We Doing Again?", but we'll get there via awesome technology!
I honestly don't get the point of this drive to photorealism for characters. Some of the best CGI human characters have been in Pixar films where they deliberately avoid realism, and some of the worst have been the attempted real ones in the Zemeckis works (Polar Express, Beowulf, etc). The Na'vi were fine because they were alien enough, and I think we're all tired of the StarTrekish, latex-faced humanoid species of the week. Only the Harry Knowles crowd still orgasms over men in rubber alien suits.
If you want real looking humans, there's these things called "humans" you can use. Save the CGI for everything else like "300" or "Sky Captain" did.
Another Sean Connery Bond film? Why? We did that already. You really want the second century of films to star all the actors from the first century?
We've also had saved games instead of checkpoints for even longer so the problem for this does not exist.
I dunno, man, I keep running into great games even now where they outsourced the save system to monkeys or something. Or you have Peter Molyneux with his Precious Philosophy that decisions in games must have Meaning! Oooo! [cue dramatic music] That's nice, Petey. You just lost the many, many of us who play in game worlds to have fun and experiment. We want to try weird and goofy things, and then go back to a previous save and try something else. That's one of the whole frakking points of virtual worlds.
Although I did enjoy Fable 2. Go figure.:-)
Example: as great as Arkham Asylum was, it had no manual save at all. If you needed to stop, you had to run back to an area transition, and if you wanted to go back to an earlier point to show a friend something, nope, not happening. There's this move to a single, automated save file which I am *not* liking. It's making me want to put together a new gaming PC rig for the first time in years.
The penalty serves as a driver, without this driver games quickly become boring.
I see no problem with having the respawn point right before, say, a boss battle. Making me re-fight the bosses minions again and probably sit through the same cut scene to *me* is boring. It's not so much as respawning without penalty, it's just reloading the save before the battle. If you beat the boss to 5% health, die, and get to restart with the boss at 5%, no, I'm not looking for that.
First they came for the 9/11 truthers, and I said noth- well, actually, anything they can do to mess with *those* loons is OK by me. Can they eff up ther anti-vaxxers, too?
Late Tuesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Who?
released a statement asking the Chinese government to explain itself, saying that Google's allegations 'raise very serious concerns and questions.'
Ah, strongly worded statements. The stuff of international ACTION! That'll learn 'em.
She continued:
Why?
'The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy.'"
China: Huh? Wha? You talkin' to me? What? Meh... (goes back to whatever it was doing) Hillary: Don't make me wag my finger at you! China: You're so cute when you think anyone cares! LOL!
Games these days generally have mid-level checkpoints and infinite continues, so there's no satisfaction in reaching the end.
For *YOU* there's no satisfaction. Other people have different attitudes about gaming. Me, I hate having to redo an entire level and by the time I get back to the point of fail, I forget what the hell I did wrong the first time.
The archetype of that, for me, is the quadruple pillar jump in the first Tomb Raider. It was really twitchy, but doable as you figure out the precise sequence of moves. You fail and get sent not back to the entrance of the room, but about two miles away. You had to run back through a completely eventless set of corridors just to try the jumps again. I beat it eventually, but I wanted to hunt down every programmer of the game and punch them all in the face. That's fun? How can that, in any way shape or form, by even the loosest definition, be considered fun?
Although even that can vary. With Batman Arkham Asylum, even if I beat an area successfully, I would sometimes think "I could have done that better" and go back and replay. But it's at *my* discretion. *I* decide what is fun for me.
The end user should be treated as king by the developers. I want to save anywhere at any time. I do not want to be subject to someone else's Grand Unified Theory of Gaming Challenge, especially if it's someone whose career is games and they have forgotten what it's like to have a life and career where gaming is just a hobby and time is precious. If you don't like "save anywhere" then DON'T USE IT. Let those of us who have to answer a phone or go to the bathroom have things our way, too.
I actually hope the next gen of consoles implement a system level game save, sort of like hibernate on Windows, where it just dumps the state of the machine to the hard drive, and it can power up back to that state.
but you're going against a so called prime directive in the original series
Hey, science gets updated all the time.:-) Temporal physics doubly so.:-D
My feelings about the movie are definitely mixed, but I actually though destroying Vulcan was pretty ballsy from a dramatic standpoint. I was totally expecting them to save the planet, and then I was expecting them to use the timeship to go back and fix it. For once a Trek film plot wasn't so easily predicted.:-)
I just hope they *do* something with it- incorporate the plight of the Vulcans in the next film. A Vulcan diaspora, perhaps.
CEA probably could have saved a lot of grief by warning these vendors ahead of time that it was going to do this sort of thing.
Or, even better, don't be such control freaks. If the *hotel* doesn't care, why should CEA? It's like those homeowner association horror stories you hear about.
If they need a more expansive view, someone should tell them in a bad economy that allowing the small businesses some slack is a good thing because that's where the job growth is going to happen.
Isn't it just a split timeline in the multiverse? That's how I see it. The original continuity exists but a few Planck distances away... I generally don't like time travel stories, but I have to admit using it to reboot a series *was* sort of an interesting idea. I just wish the villain had more reasoned motivations.
When G'Kar and Lyta Alexander headed out into the galaxy, I thought now *there* is your spinoff series. Two of my favorite characters from the show, and a totally wide open premise.
I'd be happy just to get a boxed set of the whole series on DVD. Some friends and I actually looked into how much it would cost to buy the rights and produce/sell the DVDs. Didn't get very far.:-(
This is why I maintain a relationship with a good headhunter. The idea of trying to deal with the "random filter of the week" person staffing the HR desk at any moment in any company is just depressing. Oh no, this one used dots instead of dashes for list bullets. Must be a drug user. Oops, this one didn't embolden the section headers. Obviously a lazy worker.
Hey, Yossarian is looking at the resumes today. Death to modifiers!
Slashdot Mirror
Just stop with these promises of personal flight stories. It's been promised on a weekly basis since the Wright boys converted the bike shop, or maybe even the first Montgolfier balloon. You think the FAA is going to let it happen? The PILA? (Personal Injury Lawyer Army). Most people's inability to move safely in just one or two dimensions much less three? This will be a toy that some billionaire plays with before getting bored or cratering, and maybe the military will be interested for about a month.
No "swordfish", huh?
And yes I bought ET when it came out
I was lucked out and saw a kid playing it at Sears when it came out. A bunch of folks eventually gathered around, and the comments were along the lines of "Are they kidding with this?" The poor kid playing the demo kept falling into the damn holes. :-P He left and I tried it out. Wow. Was that ever pointless.
Then again I actually played the Atari 2600 version of Pac Man endlessly, so what do I know? ;-)
These days I almost always rent before I buy. Gamefly is a godsend to me. It saved me from enough bad purchases last year to more than pay for the subscription fees through the end of this year. And their "keep it" prices are better than most used game prices online.
Geez, don't tell anyone that my friends and I borrow each other's video games and DVDs.
(looks around suspiciously)
Labour are supposedly the left leaning of the two main parties.
Your point?
What's next?
Movies bred by genetic algorithms. Everything will be allowed to evolve: the actors, the script, the story, everything!
Successful films could be put out to stud.
The fitness of each generation will be determined by focus groups.
So we'll still have "Saw XXXVI" and "Big Momma's House 29" and "Terminator: What The Fuck Were We Doing Again?", but we'll get there via awesome technology!
I honestly don't get the point of this drive to photorealism for characters. Some of the best CGI human characters have been in Pixar films where they deliberately avoid realism, and some of the worst have been the attempted real ones in the Zemeckis works (Polar Express, Beowulf, etc). The Na'vi were fine because they were alien enough, and I think we're all tired of the StarTrekish, latex-faced humanoid species of the week. Only the Harry Knowles crowd still orgasms over men in rubber alien suits.
If you want real looking humans, there's these things called "humans" you can use. Save the CGI for everything else like "300" or "Sky Captain" did.
Another Sean Connery Bond film? Why? We did that already. You really want the second century of films to star all the actors from the first century?
Remember Archon, M.U.L.E and Pinball Construction Set?
We've also had saved games instead of checkpoints for even longer so the problem for this does not exist.
I dunno, man, I keep running into great games even now where they outsourced the save system to monkeys or something. Or you have Peter Molyneux with his Precious Philosophy that decisions in games must have Meaning! Oooo! [cue dramatic music] That's nice, Petey. You just lost the many, many of us who play in game worlds to have fun and experiment. We want to try weird and goofy things, and then go back to a previous save and try something else. That's one of the whole frakking points of virtual worlds.
Although I did enjoy Fable 2. Go figure. :-)
Example: as great as Arkham Asylum was, it had no manual save at all. If you needed to stop, you had to run back to an area transition, and if you wanted to go back to an earlier point to show a friend something, nope, not happening. There's this move to a single, automated save file which I am *not* liking. It's making me want to put together a new gaming PC rig for the first time in years.
The penalty serves as a driver, without this driver games quickly become boring.
I see no problem with having the respawn point right before, say, a boss battle. Making me re-fight the bosses minions again and probably sit through the same cut scene to *me* is boring. It's not so much as respawning without penalty, it's just reloading the save before the battle. If you beat the boss to 5% health, die, and get to restart with the boss at 5%, no, I'm not looking for that.
First they came for the 9/11 truthers, and I said noth- well, actually, anything they can do to mess with *those* loons is OK by me. Can they eff up ther anti-vaxxers, too?
Late Tuesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Who?
released a statement asking the Chinese government to explain itself, saying that Google's allegations 'raise very serious concerns and questions.'
Ah, strongly worded statements. The stuff of international ACTION! That'll learn 'em.
She continued:
Why?
'The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy.'"
China: Huh? Wha? You talkin' to me? What? Meh... (goes back to whatever it was doing)
Hillary: Don't make me wag my finger at you!
China: You're so cute when you think anyone cares! LOL!
I am open to suggestions, since I am out of silly ideas that sound appealing to me.
Um... um... giant space wet napkin?
Using quantum mechanics to probabilistically erase the debris out of objective reality?
Sex bot?
Yeah, I know sex bot don't clean up teh orbits, but I'd worry less about space debris if I had one.
But do you believe that People and Bugs can coexist peacefully?
NEVER!
(clutches can of Raid)
Games these days generally have mid-level checkpoints and infinite continues, so there's no satisfaction in reaching the end.
For *YOU* there's no satisfaction. Other people have different attitudes about gaming. Me, I hate having to redo an entire level and by the time I get back to the point of fail, I forget what the hell I did wrong the first time.
The archetype of that, for me, is the quadruple pillar jump in the first Tomb Raider. It was really twitchy, but doable as you figure out the precise sequence of moves. You fail and get sent not back to the entrance of the room, but about two miles away. You had to run back through a completely eventless set of corridors just to try the jumps again. I beat it eventually, but I wanted to hunt down every programmer of the game and punch them all in the face. That's fun? How can that, in any way shape or form, by even the loosest definition, be considered fun?
Although even that can vary. With Batman Arkham Asylum, even if I beat an area successfully, I would sometimes think "I could have done that better" and go back and replay. But it's at *my* discretion. *I* decide what is fun for me.
The end user should be treated as king by the developers. I want to save anywhere at any time. I do not want to be subject to someone else's Grand Unified Theory of Gaming Challenge, especially if it's someone whose career is games and they have forgotten what it's like to have a life and career where gaming is just a hobby and time is precious. If you don't like "save anywhere" then DON'T USE IT. Let those of us who have to answer a phone or go to the bathroom have things our way, too.
I actually hope the next gen of consoles implement a system level game save, sort of like hibernate on Windows, where it just dumps the state of the machine to the hard drive, and it can power up back to that state.
Are you sure they didn't just mistype DLP.
but you're going against a so called prime directive in the original series
Hey, science gets updated all the time. :-) Temporal physics doubly so. :-D
My feelings about the movie are definitely mixed, but I actually though destroying Vulcan was pretty ballsy from a dramatic standpoint. I was totally expecting them to save the planet, and then I was expecting them to use the timeship to go back and fix it. For once a Trek film plot wasn't so easily predicted. :-)
I just hope they *do* something with it- incorporate the plight of the Vulcans in the next film. A Vulcan diaspora, perhaps.
Well, der, of course you'd update it to more modern sensibilities. The basic story does not change.
Do something new for films, like Metal Men (we have the CGI to do this now) or Doom Patrol
Or go completely nuts and do Mark Waid's "Irredeemable"
Or go even more completely nuts: The Umbrella Academy
CEA probably could have saved a lot of grief by warning these vendors ahead of time that it was going to do this sort of thing.
Or, even better, don't be such control freaks. If the *hotel* doesn't care, why should CEA? It's like those homeowner association horror stories you hear about.
If they need a more expansive view, someone should tell them in a bad economy that allowing the small businesses some slack is a good thing because that's where the job growth is going to happen.
Isn't it just a split timeline in the multiverse? That's how I see it. The original continuity exists but a few Planck distances away... I generally don't like time travel stories, but I have to admit using it to reboot a series *was* sort of an interesting idea. I just wish the villain had more reasoned motivations.
When G'Kar and Lyta Alexander headed out into the galaxy, I thought now *there* is your spinoff series. Two of my favorite characters from the show, and a totally wide open premise.
I'd be happy just to get a boxed set of the whole series on DVD. Some friends and I actually looked into how much it would cost to buy the rights and produce/sell the DVDs. Didn't get very far. :-(
Far Out Space Nuts
You know you want it.
But, seriously, I agree with others who say "Do something new".
How about some retro space opera? Lensman or Perry Rhodan? Maybe a Stainless Steel Rat series?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan
This is why I maintain a relationship with a good headhunter. The idea of trying to deal with the "random filter of the week" person staffing the HR desk at any moment in any company is just depressing. Oh no, this one used dots instead of dashes for list bullets. Must be a drug user. Oops, this one didn't embolden the section headers. Obviously a lazy worker.
Hey, Yossarian is looking at the resumes today. Death to modifiers!
The rationalisations may or may not make sense but they will still make judgements.
That. Right there. The meaning of life and the secret of human endeavor.