Encyclopedias are meant as guides to further, substantive reading, not end-sin-themselves. The last time I was permitted to rely on an encyclopedia's authority alone was in middle school (age 13).
I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the
machine, just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake,
and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my
dreams, the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my
consciousness: dark, rigid, cold, alien. Evolution is at work here,
but just what is evolving remains to be seen.
iPhone may leapfrog the competition, but Nokia's moving at Ludacris speed: "Watch out for the medallion my diamonds are reckless
Feels like a MIDGET is hanging from my necklace!"
The piece on Final Fantasy was almost entirely fluff. There was hardly any mention of the early games in the series at all.
Since deserting Nintendo and moving to the PlayStation, the Final Fantasy series has been largely a means of showing off the advanced rendering capabilities available on the hardware of the day. In earlier ages, we worried about how many angels might dance on the head of a pin. These days, we talk about how many individual hairs are rendered on head of the latest FF hero(ine)
Two things I wish the article had discussed, but didn't:
Inflation. Again, probably as a consequence of the hardware. Remember when dealing 100 damage was a big deal back in FF 1? Somewhere along the line, damage started to come in almost unimaginably huge numbers--hit points in the thousands and tens of thousands. This is to say nothing of the constantly depreciating value of the Gil: FF seems to take place in a (uni|multi)verse whose economy is only slightly worse than the closing days of the Weimar Republic
Interminable, uninterruptible, noninteractive animated sequences. Say whatever you want about chopping up GrImps, but I'd rather do that than have to sit around and wait for whatever "awe-inspiring, damage-dealing" summon to show up and sneeze for 10,000 points of damage. Most slashdotters seem to have found this sort of thing enthralling. I simply found it unimaginably tedious.
The "classics" are used in commercials because the music itself is in the public domain. It's dicey to use any music from the last century or so for commercials since you're in the copyright-clearing minefield. If the rights holders are dead or hard to find, the cost of compliance goes straight up.
Given that, you're better off grabbing a bit of, say, Verdi (I'm thinking of his "Dies Irae" from his Requiem), and handing it to musicians, and using that. You'd own copyright on the *recording* and save all the trouble of clearing rights.
As far as the quality of music goes--there has been bad music since the dawn of time. But orchestral music has been suffering a massive decline in the West simply because people's attention spans are much shorter. Hollywood has known for a long time that 90 minutes is about as long as most people will sit still for anything. A night at the concert hall is much longer, and involves no flashy special effects or other distractions.
The audience, in general, is no longer equipped to understand or enjoy orchestral music. The commercial radio environment has relegated music to something that is played in the background. Radio stations--commercial ones at least--that play classical music stress its *soothing* qualities, thus encouraging people to listen passively, or, worse, hear inattentively.
Finally: musical education has been taking a hit for years. When was the last time you knew anyone who played the cello on a regular basis, or even the piano? There's plenty of beautiful music written for the traditional orchestral instruments, but if there's no one left to play the instruments, the music goes unplayed, unheard, and unappreciated.
There are some legal ducks to be put in a row first. The UQM team hasn't decided what license the actual game *content* is released under, which would affect anyone attempting legitimate Ur-Quan Masters sequel.
A Creative Commons license that permits derivative works would probably do well enough. The problem then becomes determining what the definitive canon/timeline for the UQM universe is. Certainly anything that involves the authors of the original game will be "canon," but since the content would permit derivative work, I'd be interested to know what else emerges.
So you give kids root access. They hack. They homebrew. So what?
What if you threw a "revolution" and nobody came? I'm racking my brains to think of a single new or useful thing that PS2 Linux did for the community, and I can't think of a single one. I'll admit that there were probably feats of tremendous nerd-fu that I'm not aware of--but did any of those same nerd-fu feats result in anything that would cause me to run to the PS2 platform? Answer seems to be no.
I'm a Linux user. I like the kernel. I like the OSes that use the Linux kernel. But I get the sense that Sony is treating Linux as really nothing more than a tool to bring their own development costs down, rather than a way to improve/extend the capabilities of their platform. There's nothing wrong with that view, of course, so long as it conforms to the relevant licenses. But it sure doesn't make me enthusiastic.
Maybe I'm not 1337 enough to hang out here, but I don't think I ever knew a single person who booted Linux on the ps2...for any reason. As I recall, the OS was Free but the bootloader highly proprietary...
Totally agree. There's a lot of 3D that's more ornament than real use in strategy games. My number 1 offender is Civ4.
Whereas the 3-d terrain in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri had game effects (sea levels changed, artillery combat bonuses/penalties based on relative elevation, and so forth), the beautifully-rendered 3D maps of Civ4 have no such effects that could not have been better implemented with fewer resources in 2D.
I think the main problem is that people have grown accustomed to 3D without thinking critically why a certain perspective in 3D might be useful. Where 3D rendering has been used to enhance the actual playability of a game, I have been all for it: the Total War series of games (Shogun, Midieval, and Rome) from Creative Assembly use 3D terrain to excellent effect, and players have to take the lay of the land into effect. But it's simply no good rendering beautiful terrain in 3D and then not incorporating its very three-dimensionality into the ruleset.
IANAL (yet) but I'm not aware of any case where fictional descriptions of an object were used as prior art to invalidate a patent under 35 U.S.C. 102 or 103. If someone could produce a proper citation, I'd be *very* interested to read about it.
I wish gamers would quit whining about micro-transactions and simply stop funding them. Someone is buying those "extras," and so long as they can be sold at a profit, they will continue to be offered. Upset by micro-transactions? Then DON'T BUY THEM. Don't buy the games, buy the micro-transactions, and complain.
Insecure teens are ostensibly the market here, but I see right through this. For a small fee, spammers can create legitimate-looking accounts with legitimate-looking friends.
Somehow, I'm not surprised that hardware reviewers throw massive hissy fits. "Professionalism?" Please. These are guys who are given new, shiny toys to play with. They then get to write about the experience on the internets, and people think they're pretty cool. I would be shocked by the presence of professionalism among the reviewer corps, not its absence.
There were actually plans during the cold war to put nuclear weapons on the moon and have orbiting, nuclear-armed satellites. These plans were scrapped with the adoption of the Outer Space Treaty, which affirms that "the common interest of all mankind in the progress of the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes."
hese just don't add up to any type of person I can imagine, except perhaps spoiled rich teenage kids.
We have a winner. I've really been racking my brains to figure out who's driving the hardware arms race...and I'm thinking that the more-money-than-sense affluent suburban kids must be doing it.
Dilettante-ware is fine if nobody but the techs run it. What happens when that dilettante-ware gets good enough for production use?
Organizations that make RealMoney(TM) have jumped to Linux because it does what they need better than non-free solutions...and because it works (or can be made to work) with the rest of their IT infrastructure. A major disruption to that interoperability would leave these organizations up a creek without a paddle. Free Software doesn't just belong to the techies any more--a LOT of other people (some of whom are clean-shaven, suit-wearing, bean-counting types) use and depend on it. Some of them might even contribute to it!
Do the techs care? Nope. Should they? Maybe, maybe not. They weren't in it for anyone else but themselves, anyway. What does a disruption matter to them?
The change in license model might actually force the players who are deeply vested in the current model to fork. Kinux would have its community, sure, but don't deceive yourself: there will be a considerable impetus from industry to develop it along certain lines.
Exactly what SORT of connectivity are we thinking about here? It's all well and good for Libyan kids to have crankbooks, but what are they going to access? Is it really a good thing if Libyan schoolkids can do nothing more but read illustrated passages of Gadafi's Green Book?
The Libyan regime continues to be repressive and illiberal; the simple addition of a few handcrank laptops will in itself do nothing to change that. I know it's not popular to say this on/., but technology does not solve all problems. It's silly to believe that all you have to do is add technology and stir, and suddenly modern liberal democracy will happen, complete with vapid suburban kids expressing themselves freely on Myspace. Technologically advanced societies can be oppressive, too: Nazi Germany was a technologically advanced society that used all of the tools at its disposal--engineering, chemistry, information technology--for the brutal repression of its people. The USSR did the same.
I, for one, hope that Libya is opening itself up and becoming a free society. But I'm not holding my breath.
Slashdot Mirror
Encyclopedias are meant as guides to further, substantive reading, not end-sin-themselves. The last time I was permitted to rely on an encyclopedia's authority alone was in middle school (age 13).
I don't hate the foo. I PITX the foo.
Wing Commander and WC2 were the best of the series. I was less a fan of the "interactive movie" WC3 and WC4. Privateer was also excellent.
I still fire up wc2 in DOSBOX every so often!
It's amusing that a statement like this can be treated with dead seriousness on /. Is this because geeks have an aversion to markets?
iPhone may leapfrog the competition, but Nokia's moving at Ludacris speed: "Watch out for the medallion my diamonds are reckless Feels like a MIDGET is hanging from my necklace!"
The piece on Final Fantasy was almost entirely fluff. There was hardly any mention of the early games in the series at all.
Since deserting Nintendo and moving to the PlayStation, the Final Fantasy series has been largely a means of showing off the advanced rendering capabilities available on the hardware of the day. In earlier ages, we worried about how many angels might dance on the head of a pin. These days, we talk about how many individual hairs are rendered on head of the latest FF hero(ine)
Two things I wish the article had discussed, but didn't:
Right. Flame away.
I just started humming the theme from "Moonraker"
The "classics" are used in commercials because the music itself is in the public domain. It's dicey to use any music from the last century or so for commercials since you're in the copyright-clearing minefield. If the rights holders are dead or hard to find, the cost of compliance goes straight up.
Given that, you're better off grabbing a bit of, say, Verdi (I'm thinking of his "Dies Irae" from his Requiem), and handing it to musicians, and using that. You'd own copyright on the *recording* and save all the trouble of clearing rights.
As far as the quality of music goes--there has been bad music since the dawn of time. But orchestral music has been suffering a massive decline in the West simply because people's attention spans are much shorter. Hollywood has known for a long time that 90 minutes is about as long as most people will sit still for anything. A night at the concert hall is much longer, and involves no flashy special effects or other distractions.
The audience, in general, is no longer equipped to understand or enjoy orchestral music. The commercial radio environment has relegated music to something that is played in the background. Radio stations--commercial ones at least--that play classical music stress its *soothing* qualities, thus encouraging people to listen passively, or, worse, hear inattentively.
Finally: musical education has been taking a hit for years. When was the last time you knew anyone who played the cello on a regular basis, or even the piano? There's plenty of beautiful music written for the traditional orchestral instruments, but if there's no one left to play the instruments, the music goes unplayed, unheard, and unappreciated.
There are some legal ducks to be put in a row first. The UQM team hasn't decided what license the actual game *content* is released under, which would affect anyone attempting legitimate Ur-Quan Masters sequel.
A Creative Commons license that permits derivative works would probably do well enough. The problem then becomes determining what the definitive canon/timeline for the UQM universe is. Certainly anything that involves the authors of the original game will be "canon," but since the content would permit derivative work, I'd be interested to know what else emerges.
So you give kids root access. They hack. They homebrew. So what?
What if you threw a "revolution" and nobody came? I'm racking my brains to think of a single new or useful thing that PS2 Linux did for the community, and I can't think of a single one. I'll admit that there were probably feats of tremendous nerd-fu that I'm not aware of--but did any of those same nerd-fu feats result in anything that would cause me to run to the PS2 platform? Answer seems to be no.
I'm a Linux user. I like the kernel. I like the OSes that use the Linux kernel. But I get the sense that Sony is treating Linux as really nothing more than a tool to bring their own development costs down, rather than a way to improve/extend the capabilities of their platform. There's nothing wrong with that view, of course, so long as it conforms to the relevant licenses. But it sure doesn't make me enthusiastic.
Maybe I'm not 1337 enough to hang out here, but I don't think I ever knew a single person who booted Linux on the ps2...for any reason. As I recall, the OS was Free but the bootloader highly proprietary...
Totally agree. There's a lot of 3D that's more ornament than real use in strategy games. My number 1 offender is Civ4.
Whereas the 3-d terrain in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri had game effects (sea levels changed, artillery combat bonuses/penalties based on relative elevation, and so forth), the beautifully-rendered 3D maps of Civ4 have no such effects that could not have been better implemented with fewer resources in 2D.
I think the main problem is that people have grown accustomed to 3D without thinking critically why a certain perspective in 3D might be useful. Where 3D rendering has been used to enhance the actual playability of a game, I have been all for it: the Total War series of games (Shogun, Midieval, and Rome) from Creative Assembly use 3D terrain to excellent effect, and players have to take the lay of the land into effect. But it's simply no good rendering beautiful terrain in 3D and then not incorporating its very three-dimensionality into the ruleset.
Thank you. Not only did you give a relevant example, but you cited the Beano. Awesome.
Speaking of the Beano, does anybody know if the Beryl developers are Beano readers? "Beryl the Peril" anyone?
By "Fictional description," I meant that the claimed invention was wholly disclosed in a work of fiction, NOT in a patent.
IANAL (yet) but I'm not aware of any case where fictional descriptions of an object were used as prior art to invalidate a patent under 35 U.S.C. 102 or 103. If someone could produce a proper citation, I'd be *very* interested to read about it.
I wish gamers would quit whining about micro-transactions and simply stop funding them. Someone is buying those "extras," and so long as they can be sold at a profit, they will continue to be offered. Upset by micro-transactions? Then DON'T BUY THEM. Don't buy the games, buy the micro-transactions, and complain.
Insecure teens are ostensibly the market here, but I see right through this. For a small fee, spammers can create legitimate-looking accounts with legitimate-looking friends.
Only marginally less bother than getting certain windows apps to run in Linux with WINE. W00t?
Somehow, I'm not surprised that hardware reviewers throw massive hissy fits. "Professionalism?" Please. These are guys who are given new, shiny toys to play with. They then get to write about the experience on the internets, and people think they're pretty cool. I would be shocked by the presence of professionalism among the reviewer corps, not its absence.
There were actually plans during the cold war to put nuclear weapons on the moon and have orbiting, nuclear-armed satellites. These plans were scrapped with the adoption of the Outer Space Treaty, which affirms that "the common interest of all mankind in the progress of the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes."
hese just don't add up to any type of person I can imagine, except perhaps spoiled rich teenage kids.
We have a winner. I've really been racking my brains to figure out who's driving the hardware arms race...and I'm thinking that the more-money-than-sense affluent suburban kids must be doing it.
Dilettante-ware is fine if nobody but the techs run it. What happens when that dilettante-ware gets good enough for production use?
Organizations that make RealMoney(TM) have jumped to Linux because it does what they need better than non-free solutions...and because it works (or can be made to work) with the rest of their IT infrastructure. A major disruption to that interoperability would leave these organizations up a creek without a paddle. Free Software doesn't just belong to the techies any more--a LOT of other people (some of whom are clean-shaven, suit-wearing, bean-counting types) use and depend on it. Some of them might even contribute to it!
Do the techs care? Nope. Should they? Maybe, maybe not. They weren't in it for anyone else but themselves, anyway. What does a disruption matter to them?
The change in license model might actually force the players who are deeply vested in the current model to fork. Kinux would have its community, sure, but don't deceive yourself: there will be a considerable impetus from industry to develop it along certain lines.
Exactly what SORT of connectivity are we thinking about here? It's all well and good for Libyan kids to have crankbooks, but what are they going to access? Is it really a good thing if Libyan schoolkids can do nothing more but read illustrated passages of Gadafi's Green Book?
The Libyan regime continues to be repressive and illiberal; the simple addition of a few handcrank laptops will in itself do nothing to change that. I know it's not popular to say this on /., but technology does not solve all problems. It's silly to believe that all you have to do is add technology and stir, and suddenly modern liberal democracy will happen, complete with vapid suburban kids expressing themselves freely on Myspace. Technologically advanced societies can be oppressive, too: Nazi Germany was a technologically advanced society that used all of the tools at its disposal--engineering, chemistry, information technology--for the brutal repression of its people. The USSR did the same.
I, for one, hope that Libya is opening itself up and becoming a free society. But I'm not holding my breath.
Just like that other Will Wright bomb, SimCity.