Exactly. I wonder what an archaeologist will think of the QR codes when they dig up one of these headstones in a few thousand years? The text might still be comprehensible to some scholars, but I doubt the website backing the QR codes will still be live.
I wonder if this could lead to a magnetic alternative to the netting that's used to keep pigeon's off of balconies? Some sort of a device that produces a magnetic field that pigeons find unpleasant...
I second this! And not even prequel/sequel/alt. universe, just the original story and game (Maaaaaybe Marathon 2 as well) but with newer technologies. Maybe add some non-linear parts to make it more interesting, but still after all these years it was one of the most enjoyable FPS's I ever played.
... but surely the transcription process is quite easy for any talented musician.
If you play a song in a band, and are a decent musician, the sheet music is just a minor inconvenience, a bit like writing out the steps to a math problem that you've done in your head. Why would a by-product be 400% higher than the finished product? Does it make any sense that the nails, boards, etc. in a shed would cost 400% more than the finished product?
Spoken like someone who has probably never gotten very far in music. Try finding a "talented musician" to transcribe all the parts of a symphony for a full orchestra. In a reasonable amount of time.
And comparing nails of a shed to sheet music is ridiculous. More realistic would be comparing the assembly instructions for the shed to sheet music. To someone who has no idea how to build a shed, the instructions are VERY valuable. Your shed instructions analogy is appropriate to compare to beginner's music. For more complex music, simply pick assembly instructions to a more complex structure.
I can believe the bad design choices of R2D2 and C3P0 if they were designed by committees. Nothing ruins a good design more than lots and lots of meetings and demands for consensus and compromises.
It probably went something like this: Engineer 1: "So the demo's all ready to go. Did you guys finish the voice synth integration?" Engineer 2: "Uhh yeah.... so actually, they cut that from the project." Engineer 1: "WTF?!?!?" Engineer 2: "Management said that testing time would take too long and we'd miss the product launch deadline for this holiday season so they told us to scrap it." Engineer 1: "What? How is this machine supposed to communicate?" Engineer 2: "They said to just leave the diagnostic beeper in with the developer's code manual. The voice chip will be a separately available upgrade in 6 months. Besides, this thing is really just supposed to talk directly to other machines. What's the worst that could happen?" Engineer 1: "I'm selling my stocks in this company this afternoon, want to join me?" Engineer 2: ".... Yeah I guess so. I hear there's this other awesome project, some kind of moon-sized battleship. It should be fun. Let's check if they're hiring!"
And I bet that the Death Star problems were due to budget overruns...
I seem to recall that in the original Halo, some of the short little Covenant enemies would also sometimes freak out when the player attacked then ducked behind a corner out of sight. It could work to the player's advantage if they hit them with a plasma grenade - the freaked out baddy would sometimes run screaming back to his freinds just as the grenade went off!:P It didn't always work, I think a couple times they came running at me!
I get more annoyed by RTS AI's - even on "Normal" difficulty, they seem to have omniscience of the whole map and can "concentrate" on several objectives (capture point on map, attack enemy base, hold resource mine, build secondary base, etc...) at once, more easily than a human player. In "campaign" modes, they tend to be too heavily scripted - I find this especially true in Supreme Commander: hit one objective and the AI simply waits for the player to make the next move.
There's a db called Project Voldemort? That's awesome! I'm switching to that just for the name! I think my manager is a Harry Potter fan so getting approval shouldn't be too hard.
I remember a lab with over two dozen workstations named after cheeses. It made for interesting emails from users when they crashed, such as "Mozerella is melting down again!"
hehehe... It might be kinda fun to take a phone on this system and go spin in circles for hours on a merry-go-round in a playground. I wonder what other mischief you get into with one of these?
Because even if they WANT to replace it, that process could take several years, depending on the complexity of the system. Business needs change and evolve. The mainframe has to keep up. Even if your long term plan is to replace it, it's not just as simple as "stop using the old system and switch to the new one tomorrow".
Jumping straight to 6.0 seems a little strange. Especially since no customer will have ever recalled hearing about versions 5, 4, 3, 2, or 1. Why not go to year numbers as versions, such as "FooApp 2008"? Only problem with that is it looks outdated if you don't have a new version every year or two, but that could probably be fixed with little maintenance releases every year.
Ok, I can see that this MIGHT work for MMORPG companies, as they can make money off of subscriptions, or the ones that have tiered accounts (payed accounts have better weapons, etc than free accounts). What about games without much online component, like Bioshock? It was a good game and I didn't mind paying for it. What would such companies do to get money? Sell action figures and t-shirts? Charge for support, the way RedHat makes money supporting a free operating system?
I could even see charging nominal amounts for "chapters" of a game (say $3.00 / chapter, and if you don't like the game you just stop buying chapters) - wasn't this how Quake was originally released?...but FREE? i dunno...
What sort of molten plastic does it use? Does it start in a liquid state and then dry when it's exposed to the air? Or does it melt solid plastic and then reshape it?
I had thought that molten plastic would result in some nasty, maybe toxic vapours. Anyone here know for sure?
I remember seeing at the Toronto Condo Show a year or two ago a company that had a paint which had similar properties: would kill bacteria and destroy dirt when the dirt/bacteria contacted the painted material that was exposed to sunlight. They claimed it was already quite popular in medical settings and also in residential settings in Asia, and they were trying to break into the local residential markets.
It sounded really cool, but unfortunately, they guy who was at the booth was more sales than tech. Does anyone know what this was, or how it worked? It sounds similar to the clothing described here.
Could you imagine if they accidentall deploy the wrong vial of pheremone, and release the "sex" odour instead of "fear"?
It would give new meaning to "make love not war".
It's too bad Apple stopped making iMacs with colours and prints on the cases. Otherwise, they could have made some cool looking computers with camoflogue cases!
So this is level design for games... what about level design for non-game situations? I can imagine using game level design for architecture:
Architect: "So I think we should have lots of cardboard boxes in this hallway" Sr. Architect: "Why?" Architect: "For better sniping spots during the shootouts!! And all good levels have cardboard boxes and crates!!!" Sr. Architect: "WTF are you talking about?" Architect: "And there should be a flamethrower canister in the Men's room" Sr. Architect: "You're fired."
hehe... actually, I remeber hearing ages ago that Oni levels were built with architecture tools, not standard level design tools.
Does anyone else find it amusing that the number of votes it passed by was 404? I guess to reflect what will soon happen to the internet... (and the captcha was "congress". hmm...)
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. I wonder what an archaeologist will think of the QR codes when they dig up one of these headstones in a few thousand years?
The text might still be comprehensible to some scholars, but I doubt the website backing the QR codes will still be live.
I wonder if this could lead to a magnetic alternative to the netting that's used to keep pigeon's off of balconies?
Some sort of a device that produces a magnetic field that pigeons find unpleasant...
I second this! And not even prequel/sequel/alt. universe, just the original story and game (Maaaaaybe Marathon 2 as well) but with newer technologies. Maybe add some non-linear parts to make it more interesting, but still after all these years it was one of the most enjoyable FPS's I ever played.
... but surely the transcription process is quite easy for any talented musician.
If you play a song in a band, and are a decent musician, the sheet music is just a minor inconvenience, a bit like writing out the steps to a math problem that you've done in your head. Why would a by-product be 400% higher than the finished product? Does it make any sense that the nails, boards, etc. in a shed would cost 400% more than the finished product?
Spoken like someone who has probably never gotten very far in music. Try finding a "talented musician" to transcribe all the parts of a symphony for a full orchestra. In a reasonable amount of time.
And comparing nails of a shed to sheet music is ridiculous. More realistic would be comparing the assembly instructions for the shed to sheet music. To someone who has no idea how to build a shed, the instructions are VERY valuable. Your shed instructions analogy is appropriate to compare to beginner's music. For more complex music, simply pick assembly instructions to a more complex structure.
I can believe the bad design choices of R2D2 and C3P0 if they were designed by committees. Nothing ruins a good design more than lots and lots of meetings and demands for consensus and compromises.
It probably went something like this:
Engineer 1: "So the demo's all ready to go. Did you guys finish the voice synth integration?"
Engineer 2: "Uhh yeah.... so actually, they cut that from the project."
Engineer 1: "WTF?!?!?"
Engineer 2: "Management said that testing time would take too long and we'd miss the product launch deadline for this holiday season so they told us to scrap it."
Engineer 1: "What? How is this machine supposed to communicate?"
Engineer 2: "They said to just leave the diagnostic beeper in with the developer's code manual. The voice chip will be a separately available upgrade in 6 months. Besides, this thing is really just supposed to talk directly to other machines. What's the worst that could happen?"
Engineer 1: "I'm selling my stocks in this company this afternoon, want to join me?"
Engineer 2: ".... Yeah I guess so. I hear there's this other awesome project, some kind of moon-sized battleship. It should be fun. Let's check if they're hiring!"
And I bet that the Death Star problems were due to budget overruns...
I seem to recall that in the original Halo, some of the short little Covenant enemies would also sometimes freak out when the player attacked then ducked behind a corner out of sight. It could work to the player's advantage if they hit them with a plasma grenade - the freaked out baddy would sometimes run screaming back to his freinds just as the grenade went off! :P It didn't always work, I think a couple times they came running at me!
I get more annoyed by RTS AI's - even on "Normal" difficulty, they seem to have omniscience of the whole map and can "concentrate" on several objectives (capture point on map, attack enemy base, hold resource mine, build secondary base, etc...) at once, more easily than a human player. In "campaign" modes, they tend to be too heavily scripted - I find this especially true in Supreme Commander: hit one objective and the AI simply waits for the player to make the next move.
You're right, that is a bit cumbersome. Hopefully, they'll release a friendly GUI wizard to make working with it more efficient.
There's a db called Project Voldemort? That's awesome! I'm switching to that just for the name! I think my manager is a Harry Potter fan so getting approval shouldn't be too hard.
Maybe they'll rename it Red Ushanka! :P
I remember a lab with over two dozen workstations named after cheeses. It made for interesting emails from users when they crashed, such as "Mozerella is melting down again!"
Tequila has lead to diamonds before, more often than other places in Vegas ;)
hehehe... It might be kinda fun to take a phone on this system and go spin in circles for hours on a merry-go-round in a playground.
I wonder what other mischief you get into with one of these?
Because even if they WANT to replace it, that process could take several years, depending on the complexity of the system.
Business needs change and evolve. The mainframe has to keep up.
Even if your long term plan is to replace it, it's not just as simple as "stop using the old system and switch to the new one tomorrow".
Jumping straight to 6.0 seems a little strange. Especially since no customer will have ever recalled hearing about versions 5, 4, 3, 2, or 1.
Why not go to year numbers as versions, such as "FooApp 2008"? Only problem with that is it looks outdated if you don't have a new version every year or two, but that could probably be fixed with little maintenance releases every year.
Ok, I can see that this MIGHT work for MMORPG companies, as they can make money off of subscriptions, or the ones that have tiered accounts (payed accounts have better weapons, etc than free accounts). What about games without much online component, like Bioshock? It was a good game and I didn't mind paying for it. What would such companies do to get money? Sell action figures and t-shirts? Charge for support, the way RedHat makes money supporting a free operating system? I could even see charging nominal amounts for "chapters" of a game (say $3.00 / chapter, and if you don't like the game you just stop buying chapters) - wasn't this how Quake was originally released? ...but FREE? i dunno...
What sort of molten plastic does it use? Does it start in a liquid state and then dry when it's exposed to the air? Or does it melt solid plastic and then reshape it? I had thought that molten plastic would result in some nasty, maybe toxic vapours. Anyone here know for sure?
I remember seeing at the Toronto Condo Show a year or two ago a company that had a paint which had similar properties: would kill bacteria and destroy dirt when the dirt/bacteria contacted the painted material that was exposed to sunlight. They claimed it was already quite popular in medical settings and also in residential settings in Asia, and they were trying to break into the local residential markets.
It sounded really cool, but unfortunately, they guy who was at the booth was more sales than tech. Does anyone know what this was, or how it worked? It sounds similar to the clothing described here.
So does this mean the Professor's smelloscope could one day be a reality? Gee, I'd hate to small Uranus.
Could you imagine if they accidentall deploy the wrong vial of pheremone, and release the "sex" odour instead of "fear"? It would give new meaning to "make love not war".
It's too bad Apple stopped making iMacs with colours and prints on the cases. Otherwise, they could have made some cool looking computers with camoflogue cases!
This isn't news,
A Clockwork Orange proved this point ages ago!
So this is level design for games... what about level design for non-game situations?
I can imagine using game level design for architecture:
Architect: "So I think we should have lots of cardboard boxes in this hallway"
Sr. Architect: "Why?"
Architect: "For better sniping spots during the shootouts!! And all good levels have cardboard boxes and crates!!!"
Sr. Architect: "WTF are you talking about?"
Architect: "And there should be a flamethrower canister in the Men's room"
Sr. Architect: "You're fired."
hehe... actually, I remeber hearing ages ago that Oni levels were built with architecture tools, not standard level design tools.
Does anyone else find it amusing that the number of votes it passed by was 404?
I guess to reflect what will soon happen to the internet...
(and the captcha was "congress". hmm...)
I've seen a list of audiophile gadgets here:
http://www.ilikejam.dsl.pipex.com/audiophile.htm
Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/256/