But "Myriad of" is grammatically incorrect since "myriad" litterally means "A lot of". So it's like saying, "There are a lot of of two player titles...". Myriad is a great word, use it with care.
I've heard some claims that medium-light gray on black is the easiest to read, particularly by this guy. But I've heard it elsewhere too... so it must be true.
But in actually, it makes sense in theory. Black tends to be easier on the eyes in large quantities than white, and grey text, as apposed to white, is less dazzling.
I really should know this in and out, since I'm a video designer for a commercial TV station... and I've taken classes in visual communcation techniques, but I have yet to hear some really definitive evidence one way or the other.
Good observation, and I'll definitely check it out.
But one thing to consider is the basic paradox of "edutainment": the moment a player realizes that they are being subversively "educated", they will be turned off. I understand this is a completely separate issue from the one we were discussing earlier, but it is worth considering.
One reason I was never able to really enjoy Carmen Sandiego games (even though I had a couple) was that I knew, at some level, that there was some sort of subversion going on, that game makers were purposefully trying to "trick" kids into learning without knowing it. This always nagged at me, and made me feel a bit uncomfortable playing the game. However, number munchers I was okay with because it was completely obvious and out in the open. Even though Carmen Sandiego was probably more of "my kind" of game (adventure as aposed to arcade), I had problems enjoying it.
Probably the best edutainment game I ever played was a game called "Journeyman Project 2: Burried in Time". Which was a MYST style adventure game that took the player to 4 different places in human history (one of which was futuristic... but it still tought some real-life things about physics and space-travel). I played this my freshman year of high school, and loved the game. Only much later did I begin to realize that it was an educational game, and started seeing it in the "edutainment" section of computer stores and magazines. By that time, it didn't bother me either.
In that case, the history was simply a backdrop... something pre-written that the designers were able to use to create their gameworld. The fact that I was learning so much about Mayan culture or the Renaissance was completely secondary. It was also done in an entertaining way with a witty computer voiceover that often broke the 4th wall, "my... you just want to go everywhere, Gage... if the creators had let you go everywhere, the game would never have been finished." It was edgy, it was dramatic, the visuals were stunning, and it was highly interactive. It wasn't "art" in the way that I felt MYST was, but it was very entertaining, and only later did I realize how much I had learned through it.
This will always be a conundrum of organized societies. The reality is that moral compass is a truly personal thing, and cannot, by its very nature, be determined by the government. HOWEVER, for a society to function at all, the government must act as if their laws do equate some sort of universal moral code. The alternative is anarcy, which has never proven to be an efficient and viable candidate to large-scale societies.
Basically, one "line", if you will, is demanded of everyone belonging to a society, that is: "it is immoral to break the letter of the law". Now, we may all scoff at the rediculusness of this claim, but it's the thread that holds all societies together. People have to believe that they can't just do anything that they think is correct, they must act in some sort of accordance to moral code.
Obviously, we will always break that code when we truly believe it to be neccessary, or when we feel that it is not contrary to the rest of society's benefit to do so. For instance... I have been known to dabble in the use of illegal substances. I do it in such a way that I've never felt like my actions would hinder society as a whole, so I feel completely moraly in the clear in doing so. We all deviate at one point or another, and society requires us to be somewhat flexible in our interpration of moral code, or we would never progress as a culture.
It's completely impossible to be part of a society and not at least partially follow the "legality equates morality" code. It's also impossible to be human and follow that code 100% of the time. Conservative-minded individuals may tend to equate them more often (as is part of the definition of conservatism), but they still do it when they truly feel there is a conflict. Liberal-minded people may tend to throw the equation to the wind more often, but if they belong to a society, they too must believe in it to some degree or they would be a total moral island, which noone is.
It's within this balance that we function as a socialized species. One of the reasons there is no such thing as a perfect form of government is that one of the defining features of a society is that it, by its very nature, is always teetering on this balance... its impossible not to.
That's the kind of thing that a truly GOOD educator isn't asking for. Standardized tests hinder education terribly. Of course, we need accountability for education, but the current strategies of standardized testing are pretty bad.
Educational methods that revolve around memorization, be it in games or anything else, are usually very ineffecient. Teaching facts is along the lines of giving a man a fish instead of teaching him how to do so. Once you learn that fact, it does little to nothing to your overall education in other areas.
The most effective teaching methods involve giving students the tools to be able to learn how to learn. Most learning will be done on a student's own through exploration, even if much of it is passive.
That's where video games come in. Legend of Zelda may not teach you Mayan history, it might not show you, directly, how to do algebra, but it develops problem solving and creative thinking skills in fairly complex ways that will make a student's job in learning those things FAR easier. Zelda isn't even an "education game" but its innate problem solving is more involved that almost any story problem you'll encounter in HS, and kids play Zelda in grade school. The problem is, it's not easilly quantifiable because there are no hard-and-fast facts being learned, but as I said, fact learning is one of the least inefficient educational methods. Sure, facts must be taught, but there should be much less emphasis on fact learning and more emphasis on critical thinking skills.
Meanwhile, over the course of Zelda, or even an adventure FPS, RPG, or most other modern games, you're reading a lot of on-screen text, you're doing mathmatical computation for stats, puzzles, and the like... and all surrounded by various time limits that act as drill. And to top it off, it's fun and doesn't FEEL like work. What more could an educator ask for?
All hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster! He sits in heaven sipping from Bertrand Russell's Teapot, eating eggs from the easter bunny, and occationally getting his teeth pulled by a wing-ed old bag who goes by the name of Gadis. There's also this guy named Noah who stops by from time to time to bitch about the weather.
They're usually a pretty decent group. Last year they moved against my provider, RegisterFly, which was not only involved in highly dubeus money transactions, but had completely shutdown its techsupport system and was ignoring all clients. I was one of the few trapped by an expiring domain, and wasn't able to get it back for 3 months until the entire block was forcefully moved to GoDaddy, under ICANN's guidence. I have since moved to Server Logistics, a small apple-based service with impecable tech support (I know the staff on a first-name basis), and nil down time.
However, I applaud ICANN for it's actions against RegisterFly... they were sort of my savior at that point, since RF and litterally taken my domain (and a few hundred more) hostage in attempts to stave off impending bankruptcy. I called ICANN quite a few times during this period, and they were always able to answer questions as best as they could (even though they themselves were being locked out for a time).
GoDaddy hasn't always had a great reputation, which was why I moved from them. I had mixed feelings about ICANN's forced transfer of all current RegisterFly domains to GoDaddy, but it was without question the fastest and most efficient solution. I do sorta wish that they had moved the domains to a place without a 60-day lockdown. On the other hand, after 3 months of banging on doors, being put on hold for hours, and scouring the 'net for answers, I was perfectly happy to sit back and take a breather for that period of time.
The fact that they are now moving against GoDaddy assures me that they have no underhanded deal with them, and they basically move against those they feel are in the wrong. I have no recollection of the Network Solutions debacle, however.
I think the comparison on the website says it all. Rasterization is better in a static world, where the creators set every object in place before hand. Then they can raytrace it to produce the desired reflections, lighting effects, etc. and use those raytraced surfaces as maps in the real-time rasterized world. If that's the case, then a raytraced world isn't going to look much different.
However, the advantage to virtual worlds over movies and television is that they aren't static, they're interactive. So, like in the photo with the teapot and the cup, if you want you're gameworld to feature such objects, and have them be interactive, you are forced to forego any reflection maps or pre-raytraced lighting effects, because doing so would create large inconsistancies within the gameworld.
Also, let's not forget that the character, themselves, are an incredibly important object within the game world, and as it stands, except for some lighting "tricks", you can't give them much of an interactive roll in the lighting within the gameworld. Therefor, their skin will always be plastiky, their shadows won't follow the 3-dimensionality of the space.
Basically, in a static game world, it's possible to make raster look as good as raytrace, but no game world is completely static. Also, reflection maps take a huge amount of time and memory to create, especially now with high-res and HD graphics. Many game developers just don't have the time to do those things manually for all objects. A 3D engine with raytracing built-in will make that automatic, and games will suddenly take up a lot less space. This is especially good for consoles, but even with PCs, there can be problems with multi-disc formats.
In the end, I don't buy the arguement that raster is better at lower speeds. It's got its purposes, but it's very inflexable.
While I agree with the overall point of this artical (even though I'm a big Apple fan myself), I disagree that it's much like Bill Gates. I associated Bill Gates & Microsoft with IBM very early on, and in those days, IBM were the bad guys. So Bill never seemed the endeering, scrappy underdog.
Furthermore, Steve Jobs isn't exactly the endeering, scrappy underdog either. He's the uber-charismatic spiritual leader of a industro-aesthetic movement. Do I find myself admiring the man? Certainly. But Jobs is a different animal altogther, and therefor, so is Apple. Gates has never been charasmatic, he's never been a really positive public figure. He may be applauded as a shrewd business man, in the very traditional sense, but people never really "liked" him.
Which comes to the ways in which Microsoft and Apple present themselves. Microsoft has much more straight-forward business practices and marketing: divide and conquer, buyout the little guy. Most of their business resources are used to play things out behind the scenes.
Apple, on the flipside, while being no less ruthless, seems to play it's business resources more in the public arena with consumer-aimed marketting campaigns of all shapes and sizes. Sure, they may do a lot of back-door dealings, but their public image is a lot more out in the open. Sure, they may do some weird stuff from time to time (Safari with iTunes: definitely a "no-no"), but they seem to spend a greater percentage of their marketing capital in the consumer market.
And they still do do some things that noone else has bested. Few companies can really compare to hardware interface design. Though Microsoft approaches it with the XBox360, and Adobe's software interface design may rival it (or did at one time... they've gotten sloppy as of late). Basically, only Nintendo, in following the Apple aesthetic model to the T, has been able to rival them in hardware interface design.
Mind gaming might be kind of fun, but one thing to remember is that it's not the same as traditional "control by thought" sci-fi/fantasy ideas. You don't think "lift rock" and the rock is lifted. You have to train your brain to connect a certain brainwave pattern with a lift command. It's not really that different from training your brain to press the B button when it wants to use a lift command.
In fact, training your brain is significantly more difficult because we have no experience doing it. The brain is not very quick at training itself to change states on command. It's good for therepy (I used to do Neurofeedback therepy for a while, and it was a great help).
All I'm trying to say is that while it might be fun, it's not what most people think it is, and unlike most new input devices which make things easier and more intuitive (Wiimote), brainwave output training is a slow, gruelling process that doesn't produce as fast a result as tactile responses.
Come the day we can build a super computer that can monitor an EEG and actually interpret the full thought "move character right", then we've got a good mind-control device. I'll buy an implant and use it to drive my car... but we're not quite there yet.
Okay, I don't get it, what's so broken about iTunes? On my process manager (on OS X) it shows up as a very low CPU and memory hog. And frankly, it has better use of screen real-estate than any other music browser I know, and allows for much customization. It's organization strategy, IMO, is better than any other: central library with search filters, instant keyboard access, and playlists (which I don't usually use). I have yet to see a more intuitive and user-aimed music library interface.
WMP is a screen-realestate nightmare: it has these huge buttons denoting sections that should be practically hidden in a menubar, and the interface is completely discontinuitous from any other thing Microsoft has made. RealPlayer is one big advertisement masquerading (badly) as a media player, and takes forever and a year to load.
- I use iTunes on my Windows machines at work.
- I use iTunes on my Mac at home.
I've never had any significant problems with either. iTunes used to be a bit slow and unstable on Windows, but for the last 8 months, it's been the most stable program on my computers. Adobe (which I've traditionally liked), commonly crashes with Premiere, and Microsoft Excel takes a good minute to boot up on both Vista and XP.
I always found this argument offensive. It suggests that console gamers are inherently less-computer-litterate than PC gamers. That is total bullshit. I cut my teeth programing in assembly and C back in high school, my degree is in computer music, which largle consists of complex audio programming environments (Max/MSP, C sound, etc). Currently, I work as a video editor/designer, writing scripts in After Effects. I've run Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux in the past.
So, you ask, what do I game on? My Wii and 360, of course. Why? I have no interest in online games, as an artist, I prefer games that focus on their construction and pollish rather than railing on games that don't give me the Nth degree of "freedom". At the end of the day, after sitting in an office chair, stairing at my two-screen + TV setup, I just want to lay back in the couch, turn on my TV, and play a great work of art/entertainment. I want the creator's vision to be the source of my focus... not which video card I'll have to pick up next week, not what drivers to instal... because even though I can handle that stuff (and have to at work all the time), I don't want to.
There's no cowardice in this, there's no lack of computer-literacy, it's about whether I'm a fan of playing games, or simply being a game technician. I have enough trouble worrying about which microphones to buy for drum overheads, and how to convince my boss to get a decent 3D graphics plugin.
I want to see a work of art, if that's possible. PC games feel more like work than entertainment. I'm going to guess that many PC gamers don't have full time jobs. Get one, and you'll quickly understand that busy work is a lot less mind-expanding than being immersed in someone else's world that they've made for you.
Hell, there have been consoles that allow you to use a keyboard since the SNES, but how many GAMES have you seen that use them? Why? Because a part from a few actions, most games are far more efficient to control via a gamepad. Gamepads were designed with gaming in mind, keyboards are a bastardization of a typewriter... why should they be better?
You can always use a wrench to pound in nails, but why not use a hammer instead?
"Ignore Pirates, throwing money at them is a waste of money"... best concept voiced by a game industry professional I've seen in over a year. However, I don't think the Nine Inch Nails parallel completely fits. In the case of Radiohead and Reznor, they're allowing you, without remorse, to download their albums for free. If I didn't have much interest in helping the artists (which I, personally, do), I would be completely conscience-free to download the albums without any donation.
However, game sales are a little different. Simply removing all copy-protection doesn't say, "here, have my game for free." If it's still sold in stores, and downloaded off of corporate web-pages for money (even if you theoretically could borrow it from a friend and rip it), is psychologically very different from the Radiohead/Reznor model.
What it is is the traditional audio-CD model. Audio-CDs have no DRM, they can be freely borrowed, ripped and passed around, but for the most part, the audio-CD model works. And that's what the game market should be based off of. It's about convenience and level of security. For example: say there's a little shop in Seattle that has a sign "take what you want, donate what you want". Now, many people will pay, but some wont, and probably the owner won't make as much as they would in a traditional market, because most people will only donate the bear minimum enough to satisfy their guilt. Then there's another shop that has armed guards with AK-47s posted at the entrances, and a security checkpoint. People are going to stay the hell away from that because it feels like an invasion of privacy and a complete lack of trust/respect for the consumer. The best is something just to the right of the first example, where there is very strong encouragement to pay, that will make people feel horribly guilty if they don't, but don't scare them with guards. Make it clear that you expect compansation, but that their is room for negotiation and personal exchange.
Radiohead and Reznor may have been very successful with their model, but that's partially only because they are some of the first. People are currently very quick to support artists who have taken these kinds of revolutionary strides, so they're willing to donate quite a bit. If their model were to become common-place, though, people would likely just take advantage of it. Down the road, if corporate whores like Garth Brooks & Maddona were to do the same, people would be just as quick to say "fuck you" and bleed them dry, even if they like their music.
I very much respect the Radiohead model, but I'm unfortunately very skeptical that its really a viable solution for an entire market, or two. As much as I say it, I think this guy's just a big NiN fan (for Radiohead actually pioneered it first), and having fun spouting Reznor's name... which is cool cuz Reznor's a great musician. But I don't think that what he's really proposing is going to look much like the Radiohead/Reznor model.
Napster's a terrible example. They're library is crap. They haven't paved the way to anything but complete and utter failour. Napster (in its current DRM state) is even older than iTMS, and Apple was smart to completely ignore that business model. If Napster has tought anyone anything, it's what NOT to do.
I don't trust it. Subscription services always have a catch. I'll keep buying CDs or even DRMed iTMS content before I sign my life away to a subscription service.
Amen... sounds like the writer of the artical was paid to say that. There's nothing to "get" people aren't asking for this. In fact, iTMS, as it stands, is a pretty great model right now, all they need to do is get more companies on board with the DRM-free scheme.
Getting what? I've never seen any outcry for any service such as this. I think it sounds downright horrid. Not to mention every other subscription service has failed misserably. I chose iTunes specifically because they stayed away from this kinda corporate bullshit.
There's no "listening" going on, this is all internal ideas, and they're not going to benefit anyone but the music corporations and Apple. Be careful what you wish for...
NeoOffice is a dead-end project. It's coded mostly in Java, which makes all the UI stuff insanely slow. OOO may start out slow on a Mac, but it has the potential to be just as fast as OOO on any PC, NeoOffice can never be, unless somehow they move fully away from Java.
Adoption of OS X in OOO means a fine product in the long run.
However, the fact that it doesn't have the Final Fantasy moniker means about a fifth of the sales and not as much leeway by critics (give me a break... 7.5 scores as apposed to FF12s 9.5... that's just not right). Lost Odyssey may be a Final Fantasy in all but title, however, it doesn't sell systems the way FF does.
Usually one or two good multiplayer games will last the life of dozens of singleplayer games however, so perhaps that could factor in.
I couldn't dissagree more. In my experience, I tend to get bored with multiplayer games a lot faster than solo endevours, due to their typically repeatitive nature. The one exception is Smash Bros. But I'd say that a single Final Fantasy has lasted me more than most multiplayer games combined that I've played, Smash not withstanding. Basically what I'm saying is that while what you're saying is possible, it's very rare in my experience, and in the experience of most of my friends as well. Even my friends who are heavily into multiplayer games seem to jump around from one to another quite frequently. Where-as I'm basically assured around 70 hours for a typical solo RPG or adventure game.
You're kidding right? Most adventure games (which is the vast majority of action games these days, even most FPSs) are into the 40-60 hour mark. Hell, even the last Zelda was around 60 hours in length. Even Smash Bros single player mode took me 12 hours to complete on easy, and that's by-in-large a game centered around multiplayer.
But you have to realize that BOTH of you guys are outliers. Most households don't even have more than one computer, and those that do are a desktop/laptop setup, and only use one for gaming. Relatively few people actually have gaming LANs setup in their homes. We may know of quite a few people who do (I actually don't right now), but for the population at large, that's quite rare.
Conversely, MOST console games are still single player, the vast majority anyway. That's starting to change with the Wii, but I have a feeling that gaming will continue to be, by and large, a single-player endevour for quite a few years to come. Online multiplayer sorta bridges the gap between social and single-player (though I think it's actually far less social than single player, in many ways).
I think that if you were to poll americans, you'd find that about 90% of them are playing with only one person gaming in the room at the time. Smash, Mario Kart, and Halo start to errode those figures, but even then, many hours are spent unlocking things in single player modes. Think of all the GTA, Final Fantasy, Half Life, MGS and Zelda fans out there.
Slashdot Mirror
Offtopic as hell, I know...
But "Myriad of" is grammatically incorrect since "myriad" litterally means "A lot of". So it's like saying, "There are a lot of of two player titles...". Myriad is a great word, use it with care.
"There are a myriad two player titles..."
Thank you, and good night.
I've heard some claims that medium-light gray on black is the easiest to read, particularly by this guy. But I've heard it elsewhere too... so it must be true.
But in actually, it makes sense in theory. Black tends to be easier on the eyes in large quantities than white, and grey text, as apposed to white, is less dazzling.
I really should know this in and out, since I'm a video designer for a commercial TV station... and I've taken classes in visual communcation techniques, but I have yet to hear some really definitive evidence one way or the other.
Okay, I'm willing to give way on my hatred for Microsoft if it's a battle between them and Rupert Murdock. He's one scary mother fucker.
Good observation, and I'll definitely check it out.
But one thing to consider is the basic paradox of "edutainment": the moment a player realizes that they are being subversively "educated", they will be turned off. I understand this is a completely separate issue from the one we were discussing earlier, but it is worth considering.
One reason I was never able to really enjoy Carmen Sandiego games (even though I had a couple) was that I knew, at some level, that there was some sort of subversion going on, that game makers were purposefully trying to "trick" kids into learning without knowing it. This always nagged at me, and made me feel a bit uncomfortable playing the game. However, number munchers I was okay with because it was completely obvious and out in the open. Even though Carmen Sandiego was probably more of "my kind" of game (adventure as aposed to arcade), I had problems enjoying it.
Probably the best edutainment game I ever played was a game called "Journeyman Project 2: Burried in Time". Which was a MYST style adventure game that took the player to 4 different places in human history (one of which was futuristic... but it still tought some real-life things about physics and space-travel). I played this my freshman year of high school, and loved the game. Only much later did I begin to realize that it was an educational game, and started seeing it in the "edutainment" section of computer stores and magazines. By that time, it didn't bother me either.
In that case, the history was simply a backdrop... something pre-written that the designers were able to use to create their gameworld. The fact that I was learning so much about Mayan culture or the Renaissance was completely secondary. It was also done in an entertaining way with a witty computer voiceover that often broke the 4th wall, "my... you just want to go everywhere, Gage... if the creators had let you go everywhere, the game would never have been finished." It was edgy, it was dramatic, the visuals were stunning, and it was highly interactive. It wasn't "art" in the way that I felt MYST was, but it was very entertaining, and only later did I realize how much I had learned through it.
This will always be a conundrum of organized societies. The reality is that moral compass is a truly personal thing, and cannot, by its very nature, be determined by the government. HOWEVER, for a society to function at all, the government must act as if their laws do equate some sort of universal moral code. The alternative is anarcy, which has never proven to be an efficient and viable candidate to large-scale societies.
Basically, one "line", if you will, is demanded of everyone belonging to a society, that is: "it is immoral to break the letter of the law". Now, we may all scoff at the rediculusness of this claim, but it's the thread that holds all societies together. People have to believe that they can't just do anything that they think is correct, they must act in some sort of accordance to moral code.
Obviously, we will always break that code when we truly believe it to be neccessary, or when we feel that it is not contrary to the rest of society's benefit to do so. For instance... I have been known to dabble in the use of illegal substances. I do it in such a way that I've never felt like my actions would hinder society as a whole, so I feel completely moraly in the clear in doing so. We all deviate at one point or another, and society requires us to be somewhat flexible in our interpration of moral code, or we would never progress as a culture.
It's completely impossible to be part of a society and not at least partially follow the "legality equates morality" code. It's also impossible to be human and follow that code 100% of the time. Conservative-minded individuals may tend to equate them more often (as is part of the definition of conservatism), but they still do it when they truly feel there is a conflict. Liberal-minded people may tend to throw the equation to the wind more often, but if they belong to a society, they too must believe in it to some degree or they would be a total moral island, which noone is.
It's within this balance that we function as a socialized species. One of the reasons there is no such thing as a perfect form of government is that one of the defining features of a society is that it, by its very nature, is always teetering on this balance... its impossible not to.
That's the kind of thing that a truly GOOD educator isn't asking for. Standardized tests hinder education terribly. Of course, we need accountability for education, but the current strategies of standardized testing are pretty bad.
No Child Left Behind needs to be... left behind.
Educational methods that revolve around memorization, be it in games or anything else, are usually very ineffecient. Teaching facts is along the lines of giving a man a fish instead of teaching him how to do so. Once you learn that fact, it does little to nothing to your overall education in other areas.
The most effective teaching methods involve giving students the tools to be able to learn how to learn. Most learning will be done on a student's own through exploration, even if much of it is passive.
That's where video games come in. Legend of Zelda may not teach you Mayan history, it might not show you, directly, how to do algebra, but it develops problem solving and creative thinking skills in fairly complex ways that will make a student's job in learning those things FAR easier. Zelda isn't even an "education game" but its innate problem solving is more involved that almost any story problem you'll encounter in HS, and kids play Zelda in grade school. The problem is, it's not easilly quantifiable because there are no hard-and-fast facts being learned, but as I said, fact learning is one of the least inefficient educational methods. Sure, facts must be taught, but there should be much less emphasis on fact learning and more emphasis on critical thinking skills.
Meanwhile, over the course of Zelda, or even an adventure FPS, RPG, or most other modern games, you're reading a lot of on-screen text, you're doing mathmatical computation for stats, puzzles, and the like... and all surrounded by various time limits that act as drill. And to top it off, it's fun and doesn't FEEL like work. What more could an educator ask for?
All hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster! He sits in heaven sipping from Bertrand Russell's Teapot, eating eggs from the easter bunny, and occationally getting his teeth pulled by a wing-ed old bag who goes by the name of Gadis. There's also this guy named Noah who stops by from time to time to bitch about the weather.
They're usually a pretty decent group. Last year they moved against my provider, RegisterFly, which was not only involved in highly dubeus money transactions, but had completely shutdown its techsupport system and was ignoring all clients. I was one of the few trapped by an expiring domain, and wasn't able to get it back for 3 months until the entire block was forcefully moved to GoDaddy, under ICANN's guidence. I have since moved to Server Logistics, a small apple-based service with impecable tech support (I know the staff on a first-name basis), and nil down time.
However, I applaud ICANN for it's actions against RegisterFly... they were sort of my savior at that point, since RF and litterally taken my domain (and a few hundred more) hostage in attempts to stave off impending bankruptcy. I called ICANN quite a few times during this period, and they were always able to answer questions as best as they could (even though they themselves were being locked out for a time).
GoDaddy hasn't always had a great reputation, which was why I moved from them. I had mixed feelings about ICANN's forced transfer of all current RegisterFly domains to GoDaddy, but it was without question the fastest and most efficient solution. I do sorta wish that they had moved the domains to a place without a 60-day lockdown. On the other hand, after 3 months of banging on doors, being put on hold for hours, and scouring the 'net for answers, I was perfectly happy to sit back and take a breather for that period of time.
The fact that they are now moving against GoDaddy assures me that they have no underhanded deal with them, and they basically move against those they feel are in the wrong. I have no recollection of the Network Solutions debacle, however.
Define "better":
I think the comparison on the website says it all. Rasterization is better in a static world, where the creators set every object in place before hand. Then they can raytrace it to produce the desired reflections, lighting effects, etc. and use those raytraced surfaces as maps in the real-time rasterized world. If that's the case, then a raytraced world isn't going to look much different.
However, the advantage to virtual worlds over movies and television is that they aren't static, they're interactive. So, like in the photo with the teapot and the cup, if you want you're gameworld to feature such objects, and have them be interactive, you are forced to forego any reflection maps or pre-raytraced lighting effects, because doing so would create large inconsistancies within the gameworld.
Also, let's not forget that the character, themselves, are an incredibly important object within the game world, and as it stands, except for some lighting "tricks", you can't give them much of an interactive roll in the lighting within the gameworld. Therefor, their skin will always be plastiky, their shadows won't follow the 3-dimensionality of the space.
Basically, in a static game world, it's possible to make raster look as good as raytrace, but no game world is completely static. Also, reflection maps take a huge amount of time and memory to create, especially now with high-res and HD graphics. Many game developers just don't have the time to do those things manually for all objects. A 3D engine with raytracing built-in will make that automatic, and games will suddenly take up a lot less space. This is especially good for consoles, but even with PCs, there can be problems with multi-disc formats.
In the end, I don't buy the arguement that raster is better at lower speeds. It's got its purposes, but it's very inflexable.
While I agree with the overall point of this artical (even though I'm a big Apple fan myself), I disagree that it's much like Bill Gates. I associated Bill Gates & Microsoft with IBM very early on, and in those days, IBM were the bad guys. So Bill never seemed the endeering, scrappy underdog.
Furthermore, Steve Jobs isn't exactly the endeering, scrappy underdog either. He's the uber-charismatic spiritual leader of a industro-aesthetic movement. Do I find myself admiring the man? Certainly. But Jobs is a different animal altogther, and therefor, so is Apple. Gates has never been charasmatic, he's never been a really positive public figure. He may be applauded as a shrewd business man, in the very traditional sense, but people never really "liked" him.
Which comes to the ways in which Microsoft and Apple present themselves. Microsoft has much more straight-forward business practices and marketing: divide and conquer, buyout the little guy. Most of their business resources are used to play things out behind the scenes.
Apple, on the flipside, while being no less ruthless, seems to play it's business resources more in the public arena with consumer-aimed marketting campaigns of all shapes and sizes. Sure, they may do a lot of back-door dealings, but their public image is a lot more out in the open. Sure, they may do some weird stuff from time to time (Safari with iTunes: definitely a "no-no"), but they seem to spend a greater percentage of their marketing capital in the consumer market.
And they still do do some things that noone else has bested. Few companies can really compare to hardware interface design. Though Microsoft approaches it with the XBox360, and Adobe's software interface design may rival it (or did at one time... they've gotten sloppy as of late). Basically, only Nintendo, in following the Apple aesthetic model to the T, has been able to rival them in hardware interface design.
Mind gaming might be kind of fun, but one thing to remember is that it's not the same as traditional "control by thought" sci-fi/fantasy ideas. You don't think "lift rock" and the rock is lifted. You have to train your brain to connect a certain brainwave pattern with a lift command. It's not really that different from training your brain to press the B button when it wants to use a lift command.
In fact, training your brain is significantly more difficult because we have no experience doing it. The brain is not very quick at training itself to change states on command. It's good for therepy (I used to do Neurofeedback therepy for a while, and it was a great help).
All I'm trying to say is that while it might be fun, it's not what most people think it is, and unlike most new input devices which make things easier and more intuitive (Wiimote), brainwave output training is a slow, gruelling process that doesn't produce as fast a result as tactile responses.
Come the day we can build a super computer that can monitor an EEG and actually interpret the full thought "move character right", then we've got a good mind-control device. I'll buy an implant and use it to drive my car... but we're not quite there yet.
Okay, I don't get it, what's so broken about iTunes? On my process manager (on OS X) it shows up as a very low CPU and memory hog. And frankly, it has better use of screen real-estate than any other music browser I know, and allows for much customization. It's organization strategy, IMO, is better than any other: central library with search filters, instant keyboard access, and playlists (which I don't usually use). I have yet to see a more intuitive and user-aimed music library interface.
WMP is a screen-realestate nightmare: it has these huge buttons denoting sections that should be practically hidden in a menubar, and the interface is completely discontinuitous from any other thing Microsoft has made. RealPlayer is one big advertisement masquerading (badly) as a media player, and takes forever and a year to load.
- I use iTunes on my Windows machines at work.
- I use iTunes on my Mac at home.
I've never had any significant problems with either. iTunes used to be a bit slow and unstable on Windows, but for the last 8 months, it's been the most stable program on my computers. Adobe (which I've traditionally liked), commonly crashes with Premiere, and Microsoft Excel takes a good minute to boot up on both Vista and XP.
I always found this argument offensive. It suggests that console gamers are inherently less-computer-litterate than PC gamers. That is total bullshit. I cut my teeth programing in assembly and C back in high school, my degree is in computer music, which largle consists of complex audio programming environments (Max/MSP, C sound, etc). Currently, I work as a video editor/designer, writing scripts in After Effects. I've run Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux in the past.
So, you ask, what do I game on? My Wii and 360, of course. Why? I have no interest in online games, as an artist, I prefer games that focus on their construction and pollish rather than railing on games that don't give me the Nth degree of "freedom". At the end of the day, after sitting in an office chair, stairing at my two-screen + TV setup, I just want to lay back in the couch, turn on my TV, and play a great work of art/entertainment. I want the creator's vision to be the source of my focus... not which video card I'll have to pick up next week, not what drivers to instal... because even though I can handle that stuff (and have to at work all the time), I don't want to.
There's no cowardice in this, there's no lack of computer-literacy, it's about whether I'm a fan of playing games, or simply being a game technician. I have enough trouble worrying about which microphones to buy for drum overheads, and how to convince my boss to get a decent 3D graphics plugin.
I want to see a work of art, if that's possible. PC games feel more like work than entertainment. I'm going to guess that many PC gamers don't have full time jobs. Get one, and you'll quickly understand that busy work is a lot less mind-expanding than being immersed in someone else's world that they've made for you.
Hell, there have been consoles that allow you to use a keyboard since the SNES, but how many GAMES have you seen that use them? Why? Because a part from a few actions, most games are far more efficient to control via a gamepad. Gamepads were designed with gaming in mind, keyboards are a bastardization of a typewriter... why should they be better?
You can always use a wrench to pound in nails, but why not use a hammer instead?
"Ignore Pirates, throwing money at them is a waste of money"... best concept voiced by a game industry professional I've seen in over a year. However, I don't think the Nine Inch Nails parallel completely fits. In the case of Radiohead and Reznor, they're allowing you, without remorse, to download their albums for free. If I didn't have much interest in helping the artists (which I, personally, do), I would be completely conscience-free to download the albums without any donation.
However, game sales are a little different. Simply removing all copy-protection doesn't say, "here, have my game for free." If it's still sold in stores, and downloaded off of corporate web-pages for money (even if you theoretically could borrow it from a friend and rip it), is psychologically very different from the Radiohead/Reznor model.
What it is is the traditional audio-CD model. Audio-CDs have no DRM, they can be freely borrowed, ripped and passed around, but for the most part, the audio-CD model works. And that's what the game market should be based off of. It's about convenience and level of security. For example: say there's a little shop in Seattle that has a sign "take what you want, donate what you want". Now, many people will pay, but some wont, and probably the owner won't make as much as they would in a traditional market, because most people will only donate the bear minimum enough to satisfy their guilt. Then there's another shop that has armed guards with AK-47s posted at the entrances, and a security checkpoint. People are going to stay the hell away from that because it feels like an invasion of privacy and a complete lack of trust/respect for the consumer. The best is something just to the right of the first example, where there is very strong encouragement to pay, that will make people feel horribly guilty if they don't, but don't scare them with guards. Make it clear that you expect compansation, but that their is room for negotiation and personal exchange.
Radiohead and Reznor may have been very successful with their model, but that's partially only because they are some of the first. People are currently very quick to support artists who have taken these kinds of revolutionary strides, so they're willing to donate quite a bit. If their model were to become common-place, though, people would likely just take advantage of it. Down the road, if corporate whores like Garth Brooks & Maddona were to do the same, people would be just as quick to say "fuck you" and bleed them dry, even if they like their music.
I very much respect the Radiohead model, but I'm unfortunately very skeptical that its really a viable solution for an entire market, or two. As much as I say it, I think this guy's just a big NiN fan (for Radiohead actually pioneered it first), and having fun spouting Reznor's name... which is cool cuz Reznor's a great musician. But I don't think that what he's really proposing is going to look much like the Radiohead/Reznor model.
Napster's a terrible example. They're library is crap. They haven't paved the way to anything but complete and utter failour. Napster (in its current DRM state) is even older than iTMS, and Apple was smart to completely ignore that business model. If Napster has tought anyone anything, it's what NOT to do.
I don't trust it. Subscription services always have a catch. I'll keep buying CDs or even DRMed iTMS content before I sign my life away to a subscription service.
Amen... sounds like the writer of the artical was paid to say that. There's nothing to "get" people aren't asking for this. In fact, iTMS, as it stands, is a pretty great model right now, all they need to do is get more companies on board with the DRM-free scheme.
Getting what? I've never seen any outcry for any service such as this. I think it sounds downright horrid. Not to mention every other subscription service has failed misserably. I chose iTunes specifically because they stayed away from this kinda corporate bullshit.
There's no "listening" going on, this is all internal ideas, and they're not going to benefit anyone but the music corporations and Apple. Be careful what you wish for...
NeoOffice is a dead-end project. It's coded mostly in Java, which makes all the UI stuff insanely slow. OOO may start out slow on a Mac, but it has the potential to be just as fast as OOO on any PC, NeoOffice can never be, unless somehow they move fully away from Java.
Adoption of OS X in OOO means a fine product in the long run.
I'm playing it now... loving it.
However, the fact that it doesn't have the Final Fantasy moniker means about a fifth of the sales and not as much leeway by critics (give me a break... 7.5 scores as apposed to FF12s 9.5... that's just not right). Lost Odyssey may be a Final Fantasy in all but title, however, it doesn't sell systems the way FF does.
I couldn't dissagree more. In my experience, I tend to get bored with multiplayer games a lot faster than solo endevours, due to their typically repeatitive nature. The one exception is Smash Bros. But I'd say that a single Final Fantasy has lasted me more than most multiplayer games combined that I've played, Smash not withstanding. Basically what I'm saying is that while what you're saying is possible, it's very rare in my experience, and in the experience of most of my friends as well. Even my friends who are heavily into multiplayer games seem to jump around from one to another quite frequently. Where-as I'm basically assured around 70 hours for a typical solo RPG or adventure game.
You're kidding right? Most adventure games (which is the vast majority of action games these days, even most FPSs) are into the 40-60 hour mark. Hell, even the last Zelda was around 60 hours in length. Even Smash Bros single player mode took me 12 hours to complete on easy, and that's by-in-large a game centered around multiplayer.
But you have to realize that BOTH of you guys are outliers. Most households don't even have more than one computer, and those that do are a desktop/laptop setup, and only use one for gaming. Relatively few people actually have gaming LANs setup in their homes. We may know of quite a few people who do (I actually don't right now), but for the population at large, that's quite rare.
Conversely, MOST console games are still single player, the vast majority anyway. That's starting to change with the Wii, but I have a feeling that gaming will continue to be, by and large, a single-player endevour for quite a few years to come. Online multiplayer sorta bridges the gap between social and single-player (though I think it's actually far less social than single player, in many ways).
I think that if you were to poll americans, you'd find that about 90% of them are playing with only one person gaming in the room at the time. Smash, Mario Kart, and Halo start to errode those figures, but even then, many hours are spent unlocking things in single player modes. Think of all the GTA, Final Fantasy, Half Life, MGS and Zelda fans out there.