Holy crap. Is this thing a PVR too? It seems to say something about TV capture on the site, but it isn't clear (which means it probably doesn't). Otherwise, it looks really damn cool.
I fail to see how The Matrix and Neuromancer overlap except for the fact that both contain an AI. I, for one, wouldn't even begin to think "Matrix ripoff" if Neuromancer were to be made into a movie... a dark, 'realistic' future featuring a drug-addled anti-hero and a souped-up hot chick? I mean, sure... it has cyberspace, but Neuromancer's vision of cyberspace isn't one of a place where people hang out and pretend like it's reality... its a shitty visual representation of data, more like the Matrix screensaver than the Matrix in the movie.
I'd almost rather see Neuromancer made into a miniseries, as the writers would have more screen time to play with, and there would be less risk to the producers.
Yeah, I think is was the 14th St. Bridge. I remember that day pretty well even now... my father drove that bridge often, and my mother thought she saw the twisted wreckage of his truck in the mess. She called the office and was told that my father was near/on the bridge at approximately that time (he was on his way home, had just left a job site near there and was expected to cross the Potomac on that bridge). The next several hours were hellish as we sat glued to the TV waiting to get some information, while my mother went from weeping softly to sobbing hysterically and back all day.
Luckily, as we found out later, my father was driving with his boss and a co-worker, and his boss decided to go to another job site before they went home. They got lost, and he eventually called to let us know he'd be late.
Then you should also pay the songwriter, the sound engineer, mixer, gaffer and the guy that made the coffee at the studio. Things then become a little more complicated.
Good points, except that (AFAIK) the gaffer and the guy who made the coffee get paid by the studio;-)
Seriously though, I have a friend that is trying to do some sound engineering, and he gets jack shit for it. Literally. He works for free in hopes that the bands he is working with make some loot, as the bands he got his foot in the door with are too poor to pay him up front. If the bands that I'd donate to would assure me that they "spread the love" to the whole crew, I really think this would work. Screw +5 Funny, I was not joking.
Didn't some people put up sites to donate to artists during the Napster craze? And didn't those sites do poorly? Perhaps if there was a serious, incorporated, efficient effort to set up something like this for all artists (including the oft-forgotten part of music creation, as you noted above), it would work?
Music: Only buy used. Again, it's not that hard to find your favorite artists. Wanna support the artist? Go see their show, buy their ts-shirt or cd AT THE SHOW.
Maybe an additional way to help support your favorite artists is to steal their music, then donate to them anonymously...
If anyone was incompetent, it's the FAA for allowing Dulles to stay open. The runways are too short - a plane crashed into one of the city bridges a few years ago, it's too close to protected airspace - as we saw on 9/11.
Actually, that fateful flight departed from (now Reagan) National Airport. During a winter storm. Check your facts next time.
Good points throughout. I think that perhaps the MMORPG producers should consider Player GMs. If you look at the MUD community, you'll see that a large amount of the "immortals" (those who tend to generate content for a specific MUD) were once players of that MUD. I've seen this occur in a web-based multiplayer turn-based strategy game as well... the top players that are active community members are given rights to generate new game instances and play with the rules to make interesting new twists to gameplay. Maybe the producers/publishers/developers could feel like they remain "in control" if they monitor the player GMs and punish/reward them for their GM actions... and perhaps charge them a little more for their godlike status?
If there was a MMORPG with an active set of human GMs (or human-like AIs, but like you said, decades away), I would actually pay to play it. As it currently stands, I much prefer to stick with single-player or small multiplayer (say, NWN with 2-3 friends) RPGs. It's free (once you buy the game), and I don't have to deal with the typical MMORPG dickhead player. And its basically the same experience: hack, slash, level up, rinse, repeat.
Have you ever played a MMORPG? There is little to no Role Playing (defined as putting yourself into a Role which you Play as an actor). MMORPG worlds are chock full of people vying for the "best stuff." In my many years of playing MMGs, I've rarely seen a human player acting "in character." The Role Playing experience you get from a MMORPG is about the same as the Role Playing experience you get from a SPRPG. In a MMORPG, you are either bugging people for hints on where to find "the good stuff" or running away from/ignoring n00bs that are bugging you for hints on where to find "the good stuff." In a SPRPG, you are bugging NPCs for hints on (basically) where to find "the good stuff." Both styles typically include large quantities of "monster whomping." This is not Role Playing. IMHO, the only way you are going to get a true Role Playing experience in any computer game is if the game system rewards players for Role Playing and penalizes them for acting out of character.
Or a system that allows a human DM to interact with the digital gameworld (nearly) as easily as he could with a pen & paper gameworld. Neverwinter Nights made some good steps in this direction, but IMHO it is still insufficient.
"The solution is fewer people, not more food. (Not much of a solution, admittedly)"
You're right, its not much of a solution. The real solution is education. Knowledge is power, give them the power and get them to help the world help them.
I recently had the pleasure of testing out exactly what you described. A light, LCD-per-eye, seemingly 640x480 (maybe a little less) HMD with head and body tracking within a 10' high and about 10' base radius cone (the tracker was mounted on the ceiling). The effect was incredible. Unfortunately, they cost $20k. I wish I wish I WISH I had an extra $20k laying around:)
I can't believe it took this long for someone to make this comment. There is very little chance that watermarking would survive lossy compression, and almost no chance that watermarking could be "traceable" after going through lossy compression. MP3 encoders are not created equal, their handling of the watermark will be different... and given the number of options in the lame encoder, you could end up with countless variations of MP3 output from a single PCM track. On top of that, if you were to burn a CD of this music, and then use that to rip PCM you'd probably end up with slightly different PCM, because many (all?) CD players rip audio tracks inconsistently. Then the question becomes, can watermark comparisons be admitted as evidence for copyright violations even when there isn't a 100% match? If not, watermarking is completely pointless except for punishing the unwitting masses, not the mass-production pirates.
Re-reading my post reminded me of a half-joke that my co-workers and I tell each other when we are bitching about the pathetic fools we have to work with: "Hell, fire him and give me half his salary. My output will go up because I won't spend half my time answering his questions and/or fixing his crappy code, and he wasn't netting any output anyway. It's a win-win situation!"
I don't think anyone in the IT field is worth their salary. What's the average pay now? $70K? Go look at how much post-doctorate researchers make, and you tell me how a $70K salary is justified. Not that I'm complaining, just disagreeing. I've been in the industry before the.com bubble, when a $55K position was really good.
My point was that the average pay includes those 90% "unqualified" people. Why the hell is anyone being paid $70k to do crap that any fool off the street/just out of school can do? As for post-doc researchers and their "salaries," the entire world of academia is very different. There are a lot of people that'd like to do R&D, and the supply of R&D jobs is less than the demand for them (similar to the game industry... look at their average pay compared to Software Engineering as a whole)... hence at least part of the salary difference.
There is too much bloat in the IT world, and that's why the current recession is a good thing. We need to weed out the massive amount of dead wood in the industry.
I totally agree. Just to clarify, my first full-time programming job I grossed $40k (1995 dollars) with no benefits (consulting). I know exactly what you mean by the big rush for fast, "easy" money. The problem I see is that, typically, management isn't able to (doesn't have the power to?) reward those who have the skills and can output 3-5 times as much as someone who is getting paid only 10-15% less.
Don't over-hire. Hire smart people. Hire people that work.
This is much easier said than done. Have you ever had to interview people to fill a position? I have on several occasions. In one case, it got to the point where "management" was leaning on me to "just hire someone, goddamnit!" I had enough clout at the time to refuse to just hire some jackass, but we had plenty of jackasses coming in to interview. Once you've worked in the industry a while, you'll realize that 90-95% of the people in it are not worth their salary (or the other 5-10% are way underpaid). These massive layoffs are no surprise to me; they are just confirming the fact that management can be foolish, that the economic bubble made companies feel like they must grow to keep from being left behind. I just hope that the 5-10% of people that are actually worth a shit are the ones keeping their jobs.
This is basically the first thing that popped into my head... I was thinking more for radiation protection on a Mars mission, however. Until they actually show some real-world/space test results, I'll remain skeptical.
Slashdot Mirror
Holy crap. Is this thing a PVR too? It seems to say something about TV capture on the site, but it isn't clear (which means it probably doesn't). Otherwise, it looks really damn cool.
Some (all?) of the editors don't even read the front page before posting news... how can they be expected to read the article?
I fail to see how The Matrix and Neuromancer overlap except for the fact that both contain an AI. I, for one, wouldn't even begin to think "Matrix ripoff" if Neuromancer were to be made into a movie... a dark, 'realistic' future featuring a drug-addled anti-hero and a souped-up hot chick? I mean, sure... it has cyberspace, but Neuromancer's vision of cyberspace isn't one of a place where people hang out and pretend like it's reality... its a shitty visual representation of data, more like the Matrix screensaver than the Matrix in the movie.
I'd almost rather see Neuromancer made into a miniseries, as the writers would have more screen time to play with, and there would be less risk to the producers.
Yeah, I think is was the 14th St. Bridge. I remember that day pretty well even now... my father drove that bridge often, and my mother thought she saw the twisted wreckage of his truck in the mess. She called the office and was told that my father was near/on the bridge at approximately that time (he was on his way home, had just left a job site near there and was expected to cross the Potomac on that bridge). The next several hours were hellish as we sat glued to the TV waiting to get some information, while my mother went from weeping softly to sobbing hysterically and back all day.
Luckily, as we found out later, my father was driving with his boss and a co-worker, and his boss decided to go to another job site before they went home. They got lost, and he eventually called to let us know he'd be late.
Then you should also pay the songwriter, the sound engineer, mixer, gaffer and the guy that made the coffee at the studio. Things then become a little more complicated.
;-)
Good points, except that (AFAIK) the gaffer and the guy who made the coffee get paid by the studio
Seriously though, I have a friend that is trying to do some sound engineering, and he gets jack shit for it. Literally. He works for free in hopes that the bands he is working with make some loot, as the bands he got his foot in the door with are too poor to pay him up front. If the bands that I'd donate to would assure me that they "spread the love" to the whole crew, I really think this would work. Screw +5 Funny, I was not joking.
Didn't some people put up sites to donate to artists during the Napster craze? And didn't those sites do poorly? Perhaps if there was a serious, incorporated, efficient effort to set up something like this for all artists (including the oft-forgotten part of music creation, as you noted above), it would work?
Absolutely! I got +5 Funny, but I was being completely serious. I'm glad to hear someone is actually doing this!
Music: Only buy used. Again, it's not that hard to find your favorite artists. Wanna support the artist? Go see their show, buy their ts-shirt or cd AT THE SHOW.
Maybe an additional way to help support your favorite artists is to steal their music, then donate to them anonymously...
If anyone was incompetent, it's the FAA for allowing Dulles to stay open. The runways are too short - a plane crashed into one of the city bridges a few years ago, it's too close to protected airspace - as we saw on 9/11.
Actually, that fateful flight departed from (now Reagan) National Airport. During a winter storm. Check your facts next time.
Good points throughout. I think that perhaps the MMORPG producers should consider Player GMs. If you look at the MUD community, you'll see that a large amount of the "immortals" (those who tend to generate content for a specific MUD) were once players of that MUD. I've seen this occur in a web-based multiplayer turn-based strategy game as well... the top players that are active community members are given rights to generate new game instances and play with the rules to make interesting new twists to gameplay. Maybe the producers/publishers/developers could feel like they remain "in control" if they monitor the player GMs and punish/reward them for their GM actions... and perhaps charge them a little more for their godlike status?
If there was a MMORPG with an active set of human GMs (or human-like AIs, but like you said, decades away), I would actually pay to play it. As it currently stands, I much prefer to stick with single-player or small multiplayer (say, NWN with 2-3 friends) RPGs. It's free (once you buy the game), and I don't have to deal with the typical MMORPG dickhead player. And its basically the same experience: hack, slash, level up, rinse, repeat.
Have you ever played a MMORPG? There is little to no Role Playing (defined as putting yourself into a Role which you Play as an actor). MMORPG worlds are chock full of people vying for the "best stuff." In my many years of playing MMGs, I've rarely seen a human player acting "in character." The Role Playing experience you get from a MMORPG is about the same as the Role Playing experience you get from a SPRPG. In a MMORPG, you are either bugging people for hints on where to find "the good stuff" or running away from/ignoring n00bs that are bugging you for hints on where to find "the good stuff." In a SPRPG, you are bugging NPCs for hints on (basically) where to find "the good stuff." Both styles typically include large quantities of "monster whomping." This is not Role Playing. IMHO, the only way you are going to get a true Role Playing experience in any computer game is if the game system rewards players for Role Playing and penalizes them for acting out of character.
Or a system that allows a human DM to interact with the digital gameworld (nearly) as easily as he could with a pen & paper gameworld. Neverwinter Nights made some good steps in this direction, but IMHO it is still insufficient.
Can it realize when its at the point where one more drop of alcohol will send it to the toilet?
Ever consider the acronym for Duke Nukem Forever? D(id) N(ot) F(inish)... a sign?
And here I thought Prey had been cancelled...
"The solution is fewer people, not more food. (Not much of a solution, admittedly)"
You're right, its not much of a solution. The real solution is education. Knowledge is power, give them the power and get them to help the world help them.
I recently had the pleasure of testing out exactly what you described. A light, LCD-per-eye, seemingly 640x480 (maybe a little less) HMD with head and body tracking within a 10' high and about 10' base radius cone (the tracker was mounted on the ceiling). The effect was incredible. Unfortunately, they cost $20k. I wish I wish I WISH I had an extra $20k laying around :)
They get it from the escrow agency's escrow agency, of course.
I can't believe it took this long for someone to make this comment. There is very little chance that watermarking would survive lossy compression, and almost no chance that watermarking could be "traceable" after going through lossy compression. MP3 encoders are not created equal, their handling of the watermark will be different... and given the number of options in the lame encoder, you could end up with countless variations of MP3 output from a single PCM track. On top of that, if you were to burn a CD of this music, and then use that to rip PCM you'd probably end up with slightly different PCM, because many (all?) CD players rip audio tracks inconsistently. Then the question becomes, can watermark comparisons be admitted as evidence for copyright violations even when there isn't a 100% match? If not, watermarking is completely pointless except for punishing the unwitting masses, not the mass-production pirates.
Nice chatting with you
Likewise!
I've posted almost 40 comments today.
/.? Or is it just me? I really wish I had some work to do :\
Doesn't time seem to crawl when all you do is read and post to
No, I sure didn't. I've worked in the DC Metro area all my life. It must be a common thread :)
Re-reading my post reminded me of a half-joke that my co-workers and I tell each other when we are bitching about the pathetic fools we have to work with: "Hell, fire him and give me half his salary. My output will go up because I won't spend half my time answering his questions and/or fixing his crappy code, and he wasn't netting any output anyway. It's a win-win situation!"
I don't think anyone in the IT field is worth their salary. What's the average pay now? $70K? Go look at how much post-doctorate researchers make, and you tell me how a $70K salary is justified. Not that I'm complaining, just disagreeing. I've been in the industry before the .com bubble, when a $55K position was really good.
My point was that the average pay includes those 90% "unqualified" people. Why the hell is anyone being paid $70k to do crap that any fool off the street/just out of school can do? As for post-doc researchers and their "salaries," the entire world of academia is very different. There are a lot of people that'd like to do R&D, and the supply of R&D jobs is less than the demand for them (similar to the game industry... look at their average pay compared to Software Engineering as a whole)... hence at least part of the salary difference.
There is too much bloat in the IT world, and that's why the current recession is a good thing. We need to weed out the massive amount of dead wood in the industry.
I totally agree. Just to clarify, my first full-time programming job I grossed $40k (1995 dollars) with no benefits (consulting). I know exactly what you mean by the big rush for fast, "easy" money. The problem I see is that, typically, management isn't able to (doesn't have the power to?) reward those who have the skills and can output 3-5 times as much as someone who is getting paid only 10-15% less.
Don't over-hire. Hire smart people. Hire people that work.
This is much easier said than done. Have you ever had to interview people to fill a position? I have on several occasions. In one case, it got to the point where "management" was leaning on me to "just hire someone, goddamnit!" I had enough clout at the time to refuse to just hire some jackass, but we had plenty of jackasses coming in to interview. Once you've worked in the industry a while, you'll realize that 90-95% of the people in it are not worth their salary (or the other 5-10% are way underpaid). These massive layoffs are no surprise to me; they are just confirming the fact that management can be foolish, that the economic bubble made companies feel like they must grow to keep from being left behind. I just hope that the 5-10% of people that are actually worth a shit are the ones keeping their jobs.
This is basically the first thing that popped into my head... I was thinking more for radiation protection on a Mars mission, however. Until they actually show some real-world/space test results, I'll remain skeptical.