We had to do this as part of a module on my degree course. It was fairly futile then, its still futile now.
Unlike what a lot of people have been saying I do think genres are important, they immediately allow you to narrow down what game you really want to play. However, arbitrary naming is fine. As long as you understand the terms being used people can divide the games up how they wish. Its simply not possible to have a definitive list.
The reason for this is that games are defined by too many things. E.g. FPS is a name that describes a viewpoint and an action. RTS is a name that describes the games timing and an entirely different action.
Whats more they can be crossed back and forth. There is no reason why an FPS can not be strategic and real time making it an RTS as well. (Not the most obvious example. For that youd have to look at role play which has permeated every genre out there.)
I.e. you have viewpoint, game timing, actions, setting and the constant mixing of all of them. (Most FPS can be TPS, Dungeon Keeper was top down RTS and FPS, etc, etc)
Add to this the dozens of odd ball games and the thousands of retro games that require a genre set all for themselves and you have an impossible task on your hands.
My point was and is that your definition was flawed and that its quite likely the IAU are closer to a superior one.
Now I pointed out numerous reasons why I believe your definition isnt as good as the IAU. You both consider that me not having 'anything to add to the discussion' and made a snide insinuation that I blindly back the IAU. Believe me your definition is not so perfect that I need to be blind about anything to find problems with it.
'my definition isn't confusing, the universe is' Well yes the universe is confusing but thats why we give things appropriate names to help sort it out. Your definition is confusing because it is more arbitrary than the one they already have.
'planets orbiting planets. confused? don't blame me. blame the universe. what else would you call such a situation?' but you were the one who came up with the definition not the universe... This reminds me Branigans law in futurama.
'if you called a rocky sphere with an atmosphere orbiting a rocky sphere with an atmosphere a "moon orbiting a planet" what information have you captured? you've captured less than what my nomenclature does' but thats not the definition. The definition of satelite takes on board the way the two objects orbit each other. It isnt just a random selection of which is the planet and which is the satelite so it contains just as much information and implies the way the planet and satelite formed.
'"what it is made of" is more important.' Thats an entirely arbitrary statement, not a decent form of classification. It might be more important to you. Or a good percentage of scientests. That doesnt make it more important in the grand scheme of things. An example. Europa is particularly interesting because it may have water upon it. Yet its atmosphere is tenuous so it is not a planet by your reckoning. Now a) That doesnt really matter. What ever name you give it doesnt make any difference to the level of interest the object has it just an effective way of classifying an object not the objects specifications. b) Even if you were going to classify things by order of interest to humanity your definition still doesnt work.
Incidentally 'SIGNIFICANT' atmosphere is again entirely arbitrary. What do you consider significant? MArs has a very thin atmosphere is that significant? A similar planet to pluto could gain an atmosphere easily as dense as Mars at some points in its orbit. So is significant based on how strong its atmosphere is throughout its orbit? In which case your using its orbit as a key to its definition just like the other one is. Only youve complicated it.
'well, what do we call such an object then with a nomenclature dependent first and foremost on what something orbits, rather than what it is made of?' Definition already covers that. It says anything orbiting a star. Not anything orbiting a star in a uniformed way. At no point does the planet in your example stop orbiting a star. If you are talking about the planet switching in to a satelite then thats precisely what it does. Becomes a satelite. Though the odds against that happening would be... astronomical.
As for trojan planets. Such an object would be under a different deffinition altogether.
Your freds doesnt stand up when you consider that 'significant' atmosphere is not necessary for life. As mentioned before Europa has a terrible atmosphere yet of the bodies we know of ranks first or second as somewhere life could currently exist.
It also doesnt stand up because once again it is arbitrary. While quite a few people may be interested in an Earth like planet that doesnt make it technically more important. It would be like saying. Everyone is interested in TV so lets call every useful gadget a form of television.
As I said before, and you seem to agree, we simply dont have enough information on the universe to make a solid judgement anyway. (Though I wouldnt go so far as to say its like the 4 elements to the periodic table. The 4 elements werent based in any actual research.) This is just a useful aid that can be used until we have that knowledge. What I dont agree with is that composition of a planet is any better a way of classification than orbit.
There is no decent definition I can think of (and indeed the IAU can think of.) that can cover everything and work out. While its interesting to think about ways you could do it Im fairly sure the IAU are likely to be the closest to a satisfactory answer.
There's no reason a moon cant have an atmosphere. Nor is it a concrete rule that a more distinct planet has to have an atmosphere at all.
Infact Pluto has an atmosphere, some of the time. So your definition would put Pluto as a planet depending on where it was in its orbit.
Your definition would be confusing and with the discovery of more systems would get even more so with planets orbiting planets and other planets that arnt actually planets.
The definition they have needs ironing out but is otherwise fairly solid. This Pluto nonsense is brought up purely out of sentimentality and certainly isnt scientific. (Though the intro to the article was deceptive. They arent really concerned by Pluto more by the fact we have stray objects over our orbit and thus arent a planet. Its just a technicality though.) In the larger scheme of things I agree with the end of the article. We simply dont have enough knowledge to make a clear decisions and really dont need to anyway. Anything we decide will be primarily based on our solar system alone and we have no idea what may turn up elsewhere that will make it fall apart (I.e. its more or less impossible not to make an arbitrary definition.)
Getting down a reasonable foundation in what they have come up with so far though, is probably worthwhile.
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux
on
A New Kind of OS
·
· Score: 1
You say that people should know the back end in order to use the front, but there are probably only a handful of people on Earth that truly know the full workings of a fully set up O/S so you have to draw the line further up than say machine code.
So you go to C or similar such languages. Which are also known by relatively few people. So you move up another level to commandline, but commandline for all the various processes that an O/S runs grows overly complex in no time. There are countless Unix commands some will totally cripple your system. So again you have to draw the line further up to the GUI. So people should learn where the options are in the GUI.
This article talks about moving the line once again and getting the right options on your screen automatically.
There really isnt much difference between that and the lines that came before.
Dont get me wrong I agree that programming is programming. If you are going to build an application or O/S you should know what your doing and not rely on some application to produce inefficient code for you.
However, this is all about the end result not the production. There is no reason why the end result of an app can not be placed whereever is easiest for the user. Bare in mind that someone editing a tool bar could also be considered 'programming' the system. Having your start bar order itself alphabetically, having icons snap to a grid and dozens of other automatic features could all be considered in the same line as adaptive menues. No one would want these features taken out because the user has no need of any background knowledge for them to occur.
Note I dont agree that making adaptive menues is particularly easy myself I think it just confuses things. I know for a fact my mum (The ultimate test for user friendly computing.) would freak out if a menu just decided that she wasnt using an option much and just removes it. However, I dont agree with it because I believe it is flawed by its very design. Not because it encroaches on what programmers do.
As for Neal Stephenson he uses a car metaphore, in his tirade against MS (Which, later on, it turns out he didnt really use...) and to a lesser extent Apple, yet seems to miss how that metaphore can be applied later on. E.g. A steering wheel doesnt actually steer a car it moves other parts which in turn cause the wheels to change direction. Pretty much exactly like his save documents nonsense...
He compares the functional to the artistic more than once. A moronic comparison when you consider that no device used for functionality would be made better by being overly complex and requiring vast knowledge. Would he like a spoon to be more complicated because people dont need to think about using it?
He wants to go back to a command line and GUI mix, because that would be less of a mess than just a GUI... how? He brings up BeOS but just about all the advantages he lists are in its Object Orientated structure. Nothing to do with being a mix of command line and GUI. Other than being able to run small applications in a window. How is this different to the CMD in Windows? Why does having that commandline box suddenly make the apparently horrible metaphores of the GUI, he ranted about for most of his article, all better?
This very long piece, 90% of which is just rambling, (On several occaisions I skipped huge areas, thought 'best not, I might have missed something', then found out that I hadnt...) is essentially an intellectual way of saying 'M$ SuCkZ, L1nux & BEoS w1nz'
He doesnt at any time, in the book of text he wrote, give any substantial reason for why. (Small applications are because of open source not command lines. Control over the O/S is because of rights access not command lines. Nothing he says is a flaw because of the GUI.)
Not so much, take a look at kkrieger, the textures are coming along wonderfully and whats more they have massive levels of flexability in them. Instead of relying on a fixed image procedural textures can allow for every single use of them to be different. Note that kkrieger is just 96k in total and the 360 could effortlessly run something much more complicated than it.
As for world generation Oblivion is already doing a lot of that. Everyones version of Oblivion will look quite different while you are walking around outdoors due to its mix of hand positioned and procedural generated technology.
Procedural programming has been around for a very long time. It was fairly difficult to utilise succesfully though and required a fair degree of power to match up to its pre-created rival. However, I feel that it is impossible to ignore and it appears the industry agrees. With game development taking increasing amounts of time and requiring quite literally hundreds of people we need more dynamic ways of producing the content. Procedural may be more difficult to get up and working but when it is it will allow vast games to be made with no need to build large libraries of textures. (and quite possibly, sounds, levels, characters etc etc.)
He may have been refering to the original X-Box's strange format disks. Even in dual layer the X-Box games would never exceed around 6Gig. I am not sure what the 360's format is like but id guess theyd want as much space as possible so this has probably changed.
As for dual drive loading it almost certainly wouldnt work. Try transfering from two different drives to elsewhere at the same time on your computer. Even when they are on different chains and such the peak speed you will reach will be the same as if you were transfering off 1 (Due to the fact that the system will bottleneck the transfer at multiple points.) It could be a lot worse. With collisions you can make it take many times longer.
There are ways of speeding this up with smarter hardware but its very unlikely that the 360 has this stuff built in to it.
'How does the fact that some people have gone through even worse change anything? And if they are psychos, it is because of the way they were treated.' 'So? There are plenty of ways to break a person emotionally. Homeless people don't get spat on or kicked nearly as often as they did.' Its called getting some perspective... If someone is slapped on the wrist then proceeds to brutally kill the person who slapped them. Thats a little bit worse than if they killed someone who was trying to torture them to death.
'I can't think of any war that has ever been fought for the benefit of both sides.' The Iraq war is supposed to benefit both sides. We fight the Iraqis in order to increase the quality of life for the Iraqis. That should be the whole point of the war, and no you cant justify Columbine because at no point were they trying to benefit the opposing side. They werent even benefiting the bullied. They were just killing people.
'I am actually an idealist at heart. I'm just an idealist who lives in a world that has some very ugly tendencies' You cant be an idealist and believe that a slaughter is beneficial or necessary for the world. That is pessimist and ultimately wrong, not idealist.
'Well...that all comes down to what justifies killing someone, if anything. Which is something that is entirely subjective.' 'Even if K&H didn't suffer as badly as some others (I'm guessing at least some people had it worse) that doesn't make what they went through okay. In fact, it makes it even more important that they brought the issue to the nation's attention.' Throught the brutal murders of innocent people... What on Earth is wrong you. They didnt go through any where near the amount of pain and suffering that warrented the actions they took. By your standards someone could take a harsh tone with someone else and thats enough for the other person to beat them half to death. You can get abstract about what justifies murder all you want, I mean plenty of people have taken a harsh tone im sure that accumulates in to a near death beating..., the fact still remains that they executed 13 innocent people. I dont know how many times I can say this. Nothing they went through justified taking a human life. _Nothing_
'Your assumptions are growing wearisome, especially in light of the fact that you're accusing me of presumption.' I said I suspected, not assumed. If you really have been through everything you can think of, and in my life Ive never been to an area that didnt have child helplines. Nor have I ever heard of police who would do nothing even with the evidence of physical damage, then take it further. Run away if you have to. There _are_ people that will help, even if you have to go to another city or state to find them. Itd still be infinitely preferable to murder. You dont seem to be able to get the fact that doing near enough anything else in the world to get your point across is superior to killing someone.
'Understanding or even empathizing with what they did does not mean I believe the same things.' 'After all, they sure as hell did something about it, didn't they? They refused to be victims, and you're demonizing them for it' They refused to be victims of what? They werent put through anywhere near the tortures you seem to have assumed they were. I dont know if this is some projection of your own issues crap. I dont really care. They didnt refuse to be victims of much at all. They just made other victims based on there twisted view of the world. You know the same twisted view you empathize with yet imply you in no way agree with... How can you possibly identify with or even understand someone with so much hatred towards innocent groups and innocent people, if you dont follow the same lines of thought. Do you understand what empathy means? Or has being bullied skewed your view of the world so much that youd lash at anyone regardless of whether they were a bully or not? Is that why you identify with them?
Its not me twisting what these people were. They murder
'What I am treating them like is human beings. Might I remind you that these kids took their own lives at the conclusion of their rampage?' and might I remind you that there are many who are a damn site worse off than they ever were. Who have been through far more, who have been bullied and beaten and insulted to a whole different level. Place them on a peddlestool. Not these psychos, and yes they are psychos they gave away there right to sympathy and understanding the moment they put someone to death.
'I assume that means you are against the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 then, even though all those killings may have helped out the American cause.' I dont agree that anyone should kill for there own cause. Any war should be faught with the aim of mutually benefitting both sides. The terror attacks on 9/11, the bombs from the IRA, ETA, the shootings at Columbine. These were selfish murderous acts with no justification. Not one of them were thinking about the other side and that is an important distinction. Its the difference between liberator and conqueror. Or in this case heroes and lunatics.
'That world is real, and it's not just in Columbine' Its not in Columbine at all. They were a couple of kids who got picked on. They werent homeless, starving, physically destroyed. They werent traumatised by the deaths of people they new and loved. They didnt watch there homes get destroyed, etc, etc.
A vast chunk, probably the majority have been through so much worse than the bullying they were subjected too. People in the schools ive been in, people ive talked to, have been subjected to worse bullying. Non of them have put there school mates to death for it. I dont believe any of them ever would. These werent kids pushed too hard by a harsh world they were whining morons with no concept of whats important no perspective on the world, nor decent idea of right and wrong. Itd be pitiable and deserving of some serious help only they crossed a line that millions of others, despite going through far more, would never cross. Now they deserve nothing but disdain.
'The problem is they didn't.' Then perhaps you should be thinking about how to change that. You know instead of executing innocent people to try get your point across...
'You do realize the irony of taking the moral high ground while simultaneously calling someone moronic for being willing to sacrifice his life for the good of others, right?' Being condescending when you seem to have missed the very point you pointed out in your last piece of this diatribe... Being shot to death does nothing, did nothing. The schools as you so succinctly put it installed 'metal detectors while doing nothing to solve the real problems at the school.' You wouldnt be sacrificing your life for the good of others. Thats your ridiculous fantasy to justify the deaths of those they killed, and yes the idea of you becoming some kind of martyr and not just another dead kid is moronic indeed.
'Suppose--and this might not fit in your perfect little worldview--that Klebold and Harris tried those other ways of improving things.' Suppose--and this minght not fit in your war torn psychosville worldview--that Klebold and Harris should have _tried harder_. Your not talking about taking a bus to a different town because your cornershop hasnt any bottles of your favorite pop available. Your talking about gunning down other human beings in cold blood. This isnt something that they should have _ever_ resorted to.
Heres a scenario, and I am quite certain there are less drastic methods that would have worked, they take hostages instead of murdering people. It would have sent more or less the same message and you can more or less guarentee with media attention the bullying or whatever was bothering them would have ended. There is no excuse for what they did no matter how tough you try paint the picture.
'You can fix most bullying by physically hurting the bully once. He may turn to another victim, but that, also, can be solved w
Though, as others have said and MS has indicated, its almost certain MS will use there seriously deep pockets to ensure the 360 + HD-DVD together will still undercut the PS3 I still wouldnt agree that Sony had selected the right path anyway. Media playback and Console games are two different markets and a lot of people dont want them both, especially as they are fairly out of sync. (It will probably be another 5 years before HD becomes anywhere near mainstream.)
It means that I have the choice between buying a console with the option of spending more later to keep up to date. Or spending a crap load more on buying a console with the feature already present but the very good possibility that it will never be used.
In other words its a gamble and I think the shear length of time it took for digital and even DVD to come in to play its a very safe bet to put your money on either of the consoles that didnt bother with HD stuff. The 360 now just has a safety net if even that safe bet goes awry.
Insightful??? Karma be damned (and in a thread where one of the most insightful posts so far has been marked as a troll, it most certainly will be.) this is horrifying! Your glamorizing psychopaths! Treating them like they are some kind of veterans of a war in schools.
I dont give a damn what happened to them. _They crossed the line._ Its the same line terrorists and murderers cross. Seriously, you think you can justify there rampage because it helped you out? Well I guess you can justify 9/11 for helping out the terrorist movements. I guess you can justify the multiple bombs set off by the IRA for furthering there cause. What about ETA as well. All justifiable, after all they were mudering to further their causes. You think thats an extreme or cliched thing to say? Please do explain how this differs from them?
'And then all you're saying is that the Columbine folks should have shot more faculty and fewer students.' Or that the schools should become more aware of what is happening with there pupils... If you can only see an improvement in schools coming from the execution of its staff you're more twisted than I had originally thought.
'I'd love to be shot to death if it means that other students won't have to go through what I went through.' Good for you. That doesnt change the fact there are 13 dead who didnt want to be the moronic martyr you seem to want to be. There are ways of improving things that dont involve people getting a bullet in the face. This is something you dont seem to be able to grasp.
'Klebold and Harris didn't start the fight, but--we can hope--they finished it.' Dont be so ridiculous you cant fix bullying with a single violent event. You cant fix _anything_ with a single violent event. You think bullying is some how going to dissapear, your dellusional. Bullying still goes on, and will probably escalate when in every kid the bullys pick on, they see someone who might gun them down if given the chance. Violence begets violence, always has, always will. The only thing they have done is turn schools in to prisons and removed more of the rights from millions of children in a flawed attempt at crushing something they will almost certainly just make worse.
I have been bullied, ive been through shit and gotten ignored by teachers and parents on multiple occaisions but I feel nothing but contempt for Klebold and Harris. I feel even more contempt for those who are so screwed up they can consider them saviours.
The one thing that always made me superior to the bullies is that id never need the pain of other people to get along in my life. Bullies only win when they turn you in to something as bad as they are. It appears they can chalk up another victory in your case.
'KILL all retards, people with their brain fucked up, drug addicts, people who can't figure out how to use a fucking lighter, GEEEAWD! People spend millions of dollars on saving the lives of retards and why?" "If you recall your history, the Nazis came up with a 'final solution' to the Jewish problem: kill them all. Well, incase you haven't figured it out yet, I say: 'KILL MANKIND'' - From the diary of Harris and Klebold the the people you feel 'grattitude' to.
Rez is just about the only game ive ever played that brought me near to tears. Every time I get in to the atmosphere of Earth on the last level the synesthesia gets just so damn incredible it takes significant effort to stop some tears falling. (The only predictable way of getting that much game joy, bar watching the Halo3 advert. Dont ask me why. Im not a big Halo fan, probably wont even play Halo3. The mixture of epic music and visuals of that advert just get me every time.)
Other than that ive felt a little sad and/or content at a games completion just because theres no where left to go with that particular game. Thats about it.
Though I am one of the apparent minority that do not consider games an art form so I doubt games will ever have the power to bring about tears. As the article says
'Only in a situation where the player has no control, as in a cutscene, would there be room for such outrage.'
Even my Rez example was not strictly gameplay, im barely playing the game at all as those moments come across me. I just absorb the visuals and music. The moment the level finishes, the bosses turn up and you have to start concentrating on gameplay again, all that emotion vanishes.
The ATI graphics in the 360 rivals even the most powerful PC's and its still undecided as to which GPU is greater the PS3 or the 360. (I.e. itll be development that matters far more than which GPU is being used.) Hence the fact that PS3 games (admitedly still not complete.) have shown no indication of beating the 360. Though physics, objects, AI etc should be given a heck of a boost if the Cell can get up to speed.
If ATI had botched the job then Nvidia must have as well. Inisightful? More like nonsense.
There is literally one line saying World of Warcraft is a problem, and that was from the point of view that it is a powerful competitor not that its 'crushing the industry'. It wasnt even a question about 'the decline of the PC retail game market'. It was about 'making a name for themselves in the market'. The guy even goes on to repeatedly say how much he loves what Blizzard have done and plays all there games.
The way the articles been presented, and a good chunk of the posts here, makes it sound like hes some resentful whining failure. When actually he sounds fairly positive and eager to try claim back some of the market.
Errr they had more or less conclusive proof that it was a meteorite strike from the substances they found there. (In particular Osmium) The only problem was lack of crater and that is perfectly explained by midair explosions and the way they work, which was predicted then confirmed by the jupiter impact.
1. Um how so, music, DVDs, they all deal with there 'product' in the same way because it is a 'product'. They are wrestling for entertainment time but how is that different to just about any competition. You make a good product itll sell well doesnt matter if its media or cardboard boxes. The whole point about building communities has been taken on board since Dizzy on the spectrum. Any series of games builds a community around it and the companies have been milking that for years.
2. This is another problem that has been around since very old machines like the NES every generation boosts the cost of games production cause technology moves faster than programming skills. This isnt broken yet and likely never will be the industry is already adapting with cheap alternatives like the live games, backward compatibility, and the Revolution as a whole.
3. The myth of no inovation. How often is a brand new genre of music or film discovered. Not often. These things typically happen over a period of time in increments so you go back to earlier action films and you have relatively fixed shots, then the shots start shaking and cutting faster, then slow motion, visual effects huge amounts of CG. There wasnt a single film that took a vast step. That stopped happening decades ago. Movie industry is still here still coming out with new things and there is far far more risk with a movie costing anything up to a couple of hundred million to make in comparison to games.
Games tend to innovate in exactly the same way. FPS's will have some new graphic effect, or weapon, or slow motion ala Max Payne. Small relatively safe leaps and you can see them happening even with expensive games today. (See Prey, Oblivion, Battle for middle Earth 2 on 360 etc etc.)
Of course im not saying innovation is wrong, innovation is necessary and important but its not the be all and end all. Serious Sam and Painkiller are two of my best games ever made for the PC they are pretty much rip offs of Doom made nearly a decade before them. Im sure more or less every gamer can say the same about some of there favorite games.
4. Um your lying now arnt you. X-Box 360 games adjusted for inflation are in fact no more expensive than any previous generations. Release price of early megadrive games ranged from 40 to 50 dollars. Release price of 360 games ranges from 50 to 60 dollars more than a decade later. Adjust for inflation based on an average inflation of 2% (I believe itd actually be more but for the sake of argument.) 40 to 50 from 1995 would be roughly 49 to 61. So yeah. Utter rubbish. The only people claiming games are gonna be more pricey is Sony and they are likely just going to reduce the price anyway.
This isnt even mentioning that there are already bargain bins with some of the games and budget games. Games are probably too expensive but its not new and therefore not really the cause of any break down of the industry.
5. No market can expand indefinately but the industry is already beginning to rope in new users. The article answers its own problem. Nintendo are appealing to a wider audience, MS has opened up live, Sony appears to be trying to do absolutely everything ever. (According to there marketing a gajillion times better than everyone else. We'll see Sony. We'll see.) So where exactly is the break here?
Infact where is the break anywhere in this article. Half the points are age old problems the industry has dealt with for years. Other than that there are non problems and problems that are already being dealt with. This is just the usual nonsense that pops up typically after an article has just proven completely different. (25% games sales rise on the same slashdot page as this article claiming the industry is horribly broken. Thats the kind of breaking I want to see happen to my earnings.)
Your just flipping the discrimination around and positively discriminating based on the idea that the X-Box360 is crap, and the Japanese are far superior to everyone else at determining what is good and bad in technology.
Thats as much crap as any cultural examination the previous poster made.
I believe both of you are wrong. The first poster indicated his judgement is based on the fact the Japanese dislike America and therefore American products. You are suggesting the Japanese are superior in there judgements altogether. I do think the Japanese may have some animosity to America but then so do huge chunks of the whole world, including my own country, 360's doing fine here. Its far more likely that the Japanese market is simply a different one. Not better, not worse, just different. All of the games and marketing were not made for this different market. Thats why they failed.
The japanese clearly have a style and genre set they prefer, just like everyone else does. MS didnt cater for it and now they have a hell of an uphill struggle.
Problem with downloaded movs
on
Wii-mote In Action
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
In case anyone else has had the same issues. At least some of the downloaded zips confuse the crap out of Windows and WinRAR they simply wont be able to extract them. Explorer will get confused over what the directory structure is doing. WinRAR wont even show you the directory the mov is in. (This may be because my winRAR isnt fully up to date.)
The current winACE will open the file fine though.
As to why im not so sure. For metroid the directory that causes the problems is \\227.mov (explorer reads it as WINDOWS) I can only assume this is because the thing was made on a Unix system and that folder will work on Unix will not work on Windows.
Needless to say there wasnt really any reason to have any folder structure zipped up, let alone a folder that can cause issues. Still its free so cant complain. (Well I can, and have... but you should probably ignore that.)
'even if there was a 50% chance of getting killed, I'd sign up right away'
Easy to say when your typing on a forum.
'Without people taking risks, we would not have anything like the technology that we have today.'
because I disputed that... where exactly? I was very clear in what I said. Avoidable risks. _Avoidable_. Of course risks are a part of exploration neither the poster this began with nor myself have ever denied that fact. In fact we stressed there always would be risks on multiple occaisions...
The whole point of this argument was never, lets not do anything till theres no risk at all. Its, lets not do anything until the risk is minimised as much as possible. Without making things as safe as possible id be willing to bet the resulting accidents and problems would set us back a damn site more than the delays itd take to put whats wrong, right. I really dont understand how people can argue against this point of view.
'Well, I'd say that they could learn from what went wrong, and maybe make it safer for the next group of people to go up, even if they don't fix the problem entirely, it gives the next people a better chance.'
We know something thats wrong already. We know that the foam is still not safe enough, it can be improved. The fact that they have planned for if it goes wrong is proof positive of this. We can already give this set of people a better chance. But hell why bother just fire off them off, who gives a crap if they die? Oh thats right anyone who isnt a complete bastard. Them and every politician who will find ample reason to cut the budget on the space program the moment anything goes wrong.
So in your own words 'please, stop hindering human advancement.' This additional risk has _nothing_ to do with advancing us and everything to do with the slow appearance of the space program. You have two choices
1. Take a gamble with human lives. 2. Take the PR hit involved with a delay.
No real 'hindering' involved here unless something goes wrong. Guess which number that is more likely to happen with... This is politics not advancement and human lives shouldnt be risked on that much.
'And buy a dictionary.'
You shouldnt start a sentence with 'and'. I also believe you ment life not 'like'. Know how much your mistakes bothered me? Not at all. Dont treat a post on a forum like a professional essay. The typing errors in my posts (and apparently yours as well...) are many and obvious to all who can read... on slashdot. Guess how much I care?
Im sorry did you just pass off giving a shit about human life as being politically correct hokum... Saying that an evil black knight is racist is politically correct hokum. Being against needlessly sending people to there deaths is called, not being a total prick.
Exploration is dangerous and people will get hurt and die but there is one thing that just about explorer has done in the entire history of science and that is to give themselves the best shot. (Which was the whole point of the post you responded to.)
Incidentally this is a far cry from this kind of nonsense where top engineers are being over ruled and arseholes like yourself arnt giving a crap very likely because your not the one who has to sit inside a shuttle that could go horrifically wrong. The pilots signed up for this mission not with the intent of dieing for science they signed up because they want to survive and further science. ITs the responsibility of everyone there to make sure that happens.
Lets look at it coldy though seeing as you appear to not give two shits about anyone. There is absolute zero benefit to anyone if the shuttle goes wrong and in the worst case people die. There is absolutely no reason they shouldnt wait a while to make sure that this has the best chance of working. There is every reason to believe the lead engineer and top safety officials know a metric shit tonne more than the managers and most certainly you or myself. There is every reason to believe that if something does go wrong it will set the entire space program back a massive amount.
Any way you look at it this decision is questionable. I agree that appearance over substance appears to be the way of things thats been proven in the wishy washy way parts of the Iraq war have been handled. Its fairly clear that the choice of sending an unsafe craft up has nothing to do with substance and everything to do with trying to demonstrate how active the space program is regardless of the risk.
Exploration shouldnt be lets fire off as many humans as we can and hopefully something will turn up. Thats more along the lines of comic book super villain or genocidal maniac...
If someone dies because of an avoidable mistake then yes it is a big deal whether someone like you can grasp that or not.
Well for a start off this seemed a little off. Theres 256 times the difference between read and write. This immediately indicates to me that either Sony faked everything its ever shown or this article is making something out to be much worse than it really is.
After reading other posts from what I gather read simply isnt a major requirment and will be barely noticable rather than the doom saying this article claims.
However, there was something that still lingered. He mentioned games looked object sparse (In a previous article, so before this issue ever came up.) and in this article he says 'RSX appears to be limited to setting up 275 Million triangles/second' Now is this connected to the issue of the small read speed and therefore not actually much of a problem at all? Or is this something entirely seperate and an actual debilitating factor?
Im hoping someone with more experience with these things can explain just what this is about.
(Id prefer if people dont respond with 'Its all about the games bitch!'. It no doubt is but im still interested in this from a purely technological point of view.)
Youve tried to be clever, in the process missing most of the points. Bravo.
'Yeah! You know what really pisses me off? The regular episodes of Battlestar Galactica reused many of the same actors, sets, and props from the miniseries. That is so bullshit! Who do these people think they are?'
Well other than being an entirely different media that doesnt even add up. You need to pay actors stage hands script writers the works for each and every episode. Valve do not. They already have everything there in the first place. A far more acurate analogy would be if they took battlestar galactica sliced the episodes up re-edited them together then sold it on DVD for at least as much as the original series was when it was first released. That still sounding fair to you?
'I don't either. They should have re-modeled, re-animated, re-textured and reprogrammed every character, enemy, and scene. They should have come up with a whole new engine while they were at it. Also, all new voice actors. Then the game would cost three times as much as it did and come out two years later. That sounds mighty fine.'
His complaint was that it cost too much. At what point did he say they had redo absolutely everything? Fact is to buy all half life 2 episodes and get essentially a half life 2 expansion it costs at least as much as the original on its release date. Now looking in the game stores around me the expansions are typically half the price of the original. That includes the very good ones.
'Unless you buy it boxed from a retail shop. And what a pain in the arse that is. It's almost like...oh I dunno...like there's some sort of trade off when you buy the game from Steam vs. buying it from store. It's so unfair!'
Steam and online distribution is what valve want to take over the store service. IF you hadnt noticed the original Half Life 2 when not bought over steam was littered with problems it was a disaster. If episodic content takes off over steam dont count on them taking the more expensive route of sticking it in the shops and you can sure as hell say goodbye to taking it back.
'Totally. It's like those...those stupid whatamacallits. The things with words on them? BOOKS! Yeah. When they come out with a new book in a series and it's like a year after the prevous entry in the series. Gawd. Sooo annoying.'
Once again clean over your head. The resulting package of the episodes adds up to one game. It isnt like releasing a series of books its like taking a book tearing it in to chapters and making you wait months inbetween each one. Or to compare it to its namesake itd be like waiting several months inbetween 'episodes' of your favorite TV program.
'Ha ha! What kind of dumbass would play a game just because it provided a rich, immersive experience peppered with engaging characters and sported a slick, newly-updated graphics engine anyway?'
He said sugar coat it... did you read his post at all or were you just looking to try sound really smart. Sugar Coat it as you appear to have missed means sticking something good on the outside to cover up the fact its not so good underneath. As in updated graphics engine that doesnt actually improve much. New character dialogue that doesnt actually say much and rich and immersive that isnt much richer and doenst improve immersion so much. Thats why its sugar coating. Scratch the surface and its same ol same ol.
I dont even entirely agree with much of his post but it had valid points and at the very least didnt warrent the condescending bullshit you just spewed.
Please dont mix violence in games with the debate on games as an art form.
I dont have any issue with the violence in games and the recent tirade of censorship that every other politician is trying to slap on us is minority driven, dangerous, nonsense.
I sure as hell dont think games are an art form though. (And im a tad under the age of 50...)
Slashdot Mirror
We had to do this as part of a module on my degree course. It was fairly futile then, its still futile now.
Unlike what a lot of people have been saying I do think genres are important, they immediately allow you to narrow down what game you really want to play. However, arbitrary naming is fine. As long as you understand the terms being used people can divide the games up how they wish. Its simply not possible to have a definitive list.
The reason for this is that games are defined by too many things. E.g. FPS is a name that describes a viewpoint and an action. RTS is a name that describes the games timing and an entirely different action.
Whats more they can be crossed back and forth. There is no reason why an FPS can not be strategic and real time making it an RTS as well. (Not the most obvious example. For that youd have to look at role play which has permeated every genre out there.)
I.e. you have viewpoint, game timing, actions, setting and the constant mixing of all of them. (Most FPS can be TPS, Dungeon Keeper was top down RTS and FPS, etc, etc)
Add to this the dozens of odd ball games and the thousands of retro games that require a genre set all for themselves and you have an impossible task on your hands.
My point was and is that your definition was flawed and that its quite likely the IAU are closer to a superior one.
Now I pointed out numerous reasons why I believe your definition isnt as good as the IAU. You both consider that me not having 'anything to add to the discussion' and made a snide insinuation that I blindly back the IAU. Believe me your definition is not so perfect that I need to be blind about anything to find problems with it.
'my definition isn't confusing, the universe is'
Well yes the universe is confusing but thats why we give things appropriate names to help sort it out. Your definition is confusing because it is more arbitrary than the one they already have.
'planets orbiting planets. confused? don't blame me. blame the universe. what else would you call such a situation?'
but you were the one who came up with the definition not the universe... This reminds me Branigans law in futurama.
'if you called a rocky sphere with an atmosphere orbiting a rocky sphere with an atmosphere a "moon orbiting a planet" what information have you captured? you've captured less than what my nomenclature does'
but thats not the definition. The definition of satelite takes on board the way the two objects orbit each other. It isnt just a random selection of which is the planet and which is the satelite so it contains just as much information and implies the way the planet and satelite formed.
'"what it is made of" is more important.'
Thats an entirely arbitrary statement, not a decent form of classification. It might be more important to you. Or a good percentage of scientests. That doesnt make it more important in the grand scheme of things. An example. Europa is particularly interesting because it may have water upon it. Yet its atmosphere is tenuous so it is not a planet by your reckoning. Now a) That doesnt really matter. What ever name you give it doesnt make any difference to the level of interest the object has it just an effective way of classifying an object not the objects specifications. b) Even if you were going to classify things by order of interest to humanity your definition still doesnt work.
Incidentally 'SIGNIFICANT' atmosphere is again entirely arbitrary. What do you consider significant? MArs has a very thin atmosphere is that significant? A similar planet to pluto could gain an atmosphere easily as dense as Mars at some points in its orbit. So is significant based on how strong its atmosphere is throughout its orbit? In which case your using its orbit as a key to its definition just like the other one is. Only youve complicated it.
'well, what do we call such an object then with a nomenclature dependent first and foremost on what something orbits, rather than what it is made of?'
Definition already covers that. It says anything orbiting a star. Not anything orbiting a star in a uniformed way. At no point does the planet in your example stop orbiting a star. If you are talking about the planet switching in to a satelite then thats precisely what it does. Becomes a satelite. Though the odds against that happening would be... astronomical.
As for trojan planets. Such an object would be under a different deffinition altogether.
Your freds doesnt stand up when you consider that 'significant' atmosphere is not necessary for life. As mentioned before Europa has a terrible atmosphere yet of the bodies we know of ranks first or second as somewhere life could currently exist.
It also doesnt stand up because once again it is arbitrary. While quite a few people may be interested in an Earth like planet that doesnt make it technically more important. It would be like saying. Everyone is interested in TV so lets call every useful gadget a form of television.
As I said before, and you seem to agree, we simply dont have enough information on the universe to make a solid judgement anyway. (Though I wouldnt go so far as to say its like the 4 elements to the periodic table. The 4 elements werent based in any actual research.) This is just a useful aid that can be used until we have that knowledge. What I dont agree with is that composition of a planet is any better a way of classification than orbit.
There is no decent definition I can think of (and indeed the IAU can think of.) that can cover everything and work out. While its interesting to think about ways you could do it Im fairly sure the IAU are likely to be the closest to a satisfactory answer.
There's no reason a moon cant have an atmosphere. Nor is it a concrete rule that a more distinct planet has to have an atmosphere at all.
Infact Pluto has an atmosphere, some of the time. So your definition would put Pluto as a planet depending on where it was in its orbit.
Your definition would be confusing and with the discovery of more systems would get even more so with planets orbiting planets and other planets that arnt actually planets.
The definition they have needs ironing out but is otherwise fairly solid. This Pluto nonsense is brought up purely out of sentimentality and certainly isnt scientific. (Though the intro to the article was deceptive. They arent really concerned by Pluto more by the fact we have stray objects over our orbit and thus arent a planet. Its just a technicality though.) In the larger scheme of things I agree with the end of the article. We simply dont have enough knowledge to make a clear decisions and really dont need to anyway. Anything we decide will be primarily based on our solar system alone and we have no idea what may turn up elsewhere that will make it fall apart (I.e. its more or less impossible not to make an arbitrary definition.)
Getting down a reasonable foundation in what they have come up with so far though, is probably worthwhile.
You say that people should know the back end in order to use the front, but there are probably only a handful of people on Earth that truly know the full workings of a fully set up O/S so you have to draw the line further up than say machine code.
So you go to C or similar such languages. Which are also known by relatively few people. So you move up another level to commandline, but commandline for all the various processes that an O/S runs grows overly complex in no time. There are countless Unix commands some will totally cripple your system. So again you have to draw the line further up to the GUI. So people should learn where the options are in the GUI.
This article talks about moving the line once again and getting the right options on your screen automatically.
There really isnt much difference between that and the lines that came before.
Dont get me wrong I agree that programming is programming. If you are going to build an application or O/S you should know what your doing and not rely on some application to produce inefficient code for you.
However, this is all about the end result not the production. There is no reason why the end result of an app can not be placed whereever is easiest for the user. Bare in mind that someone editing a tool bar could also be considered 'programming' the system. Having your start bar order itself alphabetically, having icons snap to a grid and dozens of other automatic features could all be considered in the same line as adaptive menues. No one would want these features taken out because the user has no need of any background knowledge for them to occur.
Note I dont agree that making adaptive menues is particularly easy myself I think it just confuses things. I know for a fact my mum (The ultimate test for user friendly computing.) would freak out if a menu just decided that she wasnt using an option much and just removes it. However, I dont agree with it because I believe it is flawed by its very design. Not because it encroaches on what programmers do.
As for Neal Stephenson he uses a car metaphore, in his tirade against MS (Which, later on, it turns out he didnt really use...) and to a lesser extent Apple, yet seems to miss how that metaphore can be applied later on. E.g. A steering wheel doesnt actually steer a car it moves other parts which in turn cause the wheels to change direction. Pretty much exactly like his save documents nonsense...
He compares the functional to the artistic more than once. A moronic comparison when you consider that no device used for functionality would be made better by being overly complex and requiring vast knowledge. Would he like a spoon to be more complicated because people dont need to think about using it?
He wants to go back to a command line and GUI mix, because that would be less of a mess than just a GUI... how? He brings up BeOS but just about all the advantages he lists are in its Object Orientated structure. Nothing to do with being a mix of command line and GUI. Other than being able to run small applications in a window. How is this different to the CMD in Windows? Why does having that commandline box suddenly make the apparently horrible metaphores of the GUI, he ranted about for most of his article, all better?
This very long piece, 90% of which is just rambling, (On several occaisions I skipped huge areas, thought 'best not, I might have missed something', then found out that I hadnt...) is essentially an intellectual way of saying 'M$ SuCkZ, L1nux & BEoS w1nz'
He doesnt at any time, in the book of text he wrote, give any substantial reason for why. (Small applications are because of open source not command lines. Control over the O/S is because of rights access not command lines. Nothing he says is a flaw because of the GUI.)
Ironic considering your post makes refrence to ridiculous conspiracy theories while his was fairly spot on.
Its only irrational attacking if the attacks arnt in fact true.
'Maybe textures are a bad example'
Not so much, take a look at kkrieger, the textures are coming along wonderfully and whats more they have massive levels of flexability in them. Instead of relying on a fixed image procedural textures can allow for every single use of them to be different. Note that kkrieger is just 96k in total and the 360 could effortlessly run something much more complicated than it.
As for world generation Oblivion is already doing a lot of that. Everyones version of Oblivion will look quite different while you are walking around outdoors due to its mix of hand positioned and procedural generated technology.
Procedural programming has been around for a very long time. It was fairly difficult to utilise succesfully though and required a fair degree of power to match up to its pre-created rival. However, I feel that it is impossible to ignore and it appears the industry agrees. With game development taking increasing amounts of time and requiring quite literally hundreds of people we need more dynamic ways of producing the content. Procedural may be more difficult to get up and working but when it is it will allow vast games to be made with no need to build large libraries of textures. (and quite possibly, sounds, levels, characters etc etc.)
He may have been refering to the original X-Box's strange format disks. Even in dual layer the X-Box games would never exceed around 6Gig. I am not sure what the 360's format is like but id guess theyd want as much space as possible so this has probably changed.
As for dual drive loading it almost certainly wouldnt work. Try transfering from two different drives to elsewhere at the same time on your computer. Even when they are on different chains and such the peak speed you will reach will be the same as if you were transfering off 1 (Due to the fact that the system will bottleneck the transfer at multiple points.) It could be a lot worse. With collisions you can make it take many times longer.
There are ways of speeding this up with smarter hardware but its very unlikely that the 360 has this stuff built in to it.
'How does the fact that some people have gone through even worse change anything? And if they are psychos, it is because of the way they were treated.'
'So? There are plenty of ways to break a person emotionally. Homeless people don't get spat on or kicked nearly as often as they did.'
Its called getting some perspective... If someone is slapped on the wrist then proceeds to brutally kill the person who slapped them. Thats a little bit worse than if they killed someone who was trying to torture them to death.
'I can't think of any war that has ever been fought for the benefit of both sides.'
The Iraq war is supposed to benefit both sides. We fight the Iraqis in order to increase the quality of life for the Iraqis. That should be the whole point of the war, and no you cant justify Columbine because at no point were they trying to benefit the opposing side. They werent even benefiting the bullied. They were just killing people.
'I am actually an idealist at heart. I'm just an idealist who lives in a world that has some very ugly tendencies'
You cant be an idealist and believe that a slaughter is beneficial or necessary for the world. That is pessimist and ultimately wrong, not idealist.
'Well...that all comes down to what justifies killing someone, if anything. Which is something that is entirely subjective.'
'Even if K&H didn't suffer as badly as some others (I'm guessing at least some people had it worse) that doesn't make what they went through okay. In fact, it makes it even more important that they brought the issue to the nation's attention.'
Throught the brutal murders of innocent people... What on Earth is wrong you. They didnt go through any where near the amount of pain and suffering that warrented the actions they took. By your standards someone could take a harsh tone with someone else and thats enough for the other person to beat them half to death. You can get abstract about what justifies murder all you want, I mean plenty of people have taken a harsh tone im sure that accumulates in to a near death beating..., the fact still remains that they executed 13 innocent people. I dont know how many times I can say this. Nothing they went through justified taking a human life. _Nothing_
'Your assumptions are growing wearisome, especially in light of the fact that you're accusing me of presumption.'
I said I suspected, not assumed. If you really have been through everything you can think of, and in my life Ive never been to an area that didnt have child helplines. Nor have I ever heard of police who would do nothing even with the evidence of physical damage, then take it further. Run away if you have to. There _are_ people that will help, even if you have to go to another city or state to find them. Itd still be infinitely preferable to murder. You dont seem to be able to get the fact that doing near enough anything else in the world to get your point across is superior to killing someone.
'Understanding or even empathizing with what they did does not mean I believe the same things.'
'After all, they sure as hell did something about it, didn't they? They refused to be victims, and you're demonizing them for it'
They refused to be victims of what? They werent put through anywhere near the tortures you seem to have assumed they were. I dont know if this is some projection of your own issues crap. I dont really care. They didnt refuse to be victims of much at all. They just made other victims based on there twisted view of the world. You know the same twisted view you empathize with yet imply you in no way agree with... How can you possibly identify with or even understand someone with so much hatred towards innocent groups and innocent people, if you dont follow the same lines of thought. Do you understand what empathy means? Or has being bullied skewed your view of the world so much that youd lash at anyone regardless of whether they were a bully or not? Is that why you identify with them?
Its not me twisting what these people were. They murder
'What I am treating them like is human beings. Might I remind you that these kids took their own lives at the conclusion of their rampage?'
and might I remind you that there are many who are a damn site worse off than they ever were. Who have been through far more, who have been bullied and beaten and insulted to a whole different level. Place them on a peddlestool. Not these psychos, and yes they are psychos they gave away there right to sympathy and understanding the moment they put someone to death.
'I assume that means you are against the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 then, even though all those killings may have helped out the American cause.'
I dont agree that anyone should kill for there own cause. Any war should be faught with the aim of mutually benefitting both sides. The terror attacks on 9/11, the bombs from the IRA, ETA, the shootings at Columbine. These were selfish murderous acts with no justification. Not one of them were thinking about the other side and that is an important distinction. Its the difference between liberator and conqueror. Or in this case heroes and lunatics.
'That world is real, and it's not just in Columbine'
Its not in Columbine at all. They were a couple of kids who got picked on. They werent homeless, starving, physically destroyed. They werent traumatised by the deaths of people they new and loved. They didnt watch there homes get destroyed, etc, etc.
A vast chunk, probably the majority have been through so much worse than the bullying they were subjected too. People in the schools ive been in, people ive talked to, have been subjected to worse bullying. Non of them have put there school mates to death for it. I dont believe any of them ever would. These werent kids pushed too hard by a harsh world they were whining morons with no concept of whats important no perspective on the world, nor decent idea of right and wrong. Itd be pitiable and deserving of some serious help only they crossed a line that millions of others, despite going through far more, would never cross. Now they deserve nothing but disdain.
'The problem is they didn't.'
Then perhaps you should be thinking about how to change that. You know instead of executing innocent people to try get your point across...
'You do realize the irony of taking the moral high ground while simultaneously calling someone moronic for being willing to sacrifice his life for the good of others, right?'
Being condescending when you seem to have missed the very point you pointed out in your last piece of this diatribe... Being shot to death does nothing, did nothing. The schools as you so succinctly put it installed 'metal detectors while doing nothing to solve the real problems at the school.' You wouldnt be sacrificing your life for the good of others. Thats your ridiculous fantasy to justify the deaths of those they killed, and yes the idea of you becoming some kind of martyr and not just another dead kid is moronic indeed.
'Suppose--and this might not fit in your perfect little worldview--that Klebold and Harris tried those other ways of improving things.'
Suppose--and this minght not fit in your war torn psychosville worldview--that Klebold and Harris should have _tried harder_.
Your not talking about taking a bus to a different town because your cornershop hasnt any bottles of your favorite pop available. Your talking about gunning down other human beings in cold blood. This isnt something that they should have _ever_ resorted to.
Heres a scenario, and I am quite certain there are less drastic methods that would have worked, they take hostages instead of murdering people. It would have sent more or less the same message and you can more or less guarentee with media attention the bullying or whatever was bothering them would have ended. There is no excuse for what they did no matter how tough you try paint the picture.
'You can fix most bullying by physically hurting the bully once. He may turn to another victim, but that, also, can be solved w
Though, as others have said and MS has indicated, its almost certain MS will use there seriously deep pockets to ensure the 360 + HD-DVD together will still undercut the PS3 I still wouldnt agree that Sony had selected the right path anyway. Media playback and Console games are two different markets and a lot of people dont want them both, especially as they are fairly out of sync. (It will probably be another 5 years before HD becomes anywhere near mainstream.)
It means that I have the choice between buying a console with the option of spending more later to keep up to date. Or spending a crap load more on buying a console with the feature already present but the very good possibility that it will never be used.
In other words its a gamble and I think the shear length of time it took for digital and even DVD to come in to play its a very safe bet to put your money on either of the consoles that didnt bother with HD stuff. The 360 now just has a safety net if even that safe bet goes awry.
Insightful??? Karma be damned (and in a thread where one of the most insightful posts so far has been marked as a troll, it most certainly will be.) this is horrifying! Your glamorizing psychopaths! Treating them like they are some kind of veterans of a war in schools.
I dont give a damn what happened to them. _They crossed the line._ Its the same line terrorists and murderers cross. Seriously, you think you can justify there rampage because it helped you out? Well I guess you can justify 9/11 for helping out the terrorist movements. I guess you can justify the multiple bombs set off by the IRA for furthering there cause. What about ETA as well. All justifiable, after all they were mudering to further their causes. You think thats an extreme or cliched thing to say? Please do explain how this differs from them?
'And then all you're saying is that the Columbine folks should have shot more faculty and fewer students.'
Or that the schools should become more aware of what is happening with there pupils... If you can only see an improvement in schools coming from the execution of its staff you're more twisted than I had originally thought.
'I'd love to be shot to death if it means that other students won't have to go through what I went through.'
Good for you. That doesnt change the fact there are 13 dead who didnt want to be the moronic martyr you seem to want to be. There are ways of improving things that dont involve people getting a bullet in the face. This is something you dont seem to be able to grasp.
'Klebold and Harris didn't start the fight, but--we can hope--they finished it.'
Dont be so ridiculous you cant fix bullying with a single violent event. You cant fix _anything_ with a single violent event. You think bullying is some how going to dissapear, your dellusional. Bullying still goes on, and will probably escalate when in every kid the bullys pick on, they see someone who might gun them down if given the chance. Violence begets violence, always has, always will. The only thing they have done is turn schools in to prisons and removed more of the rights from millions of children in a flawed attempt at crushing something they will almost certainly just make worse.
I have been bullied, ive been through shit and gotten ignored by teachers and parents on multiple occaisions but I feel nothing but contempt for Klebold and Harris. I feel even more contempt for those who are so screwed up they can consider them saviours.
The one thing that always made me superior to the bullies is that id never need the pain of other people to get along in my life. Bullies only win when they turn you in to something as bad as they are. It appears they can chalk up another victory in your case.
'KILL all retards, people with their brain fucked up, drug addicts, people who can't figure out how to use a fucking lighter, GEEEAWD! People spend millions of dollars on saving the lives of retards and why?" "If you recall your history, the Nazis came up with a 'final solution' to the Jewish problem: kill them all. Well, incase you haven't figured it out yet, I say: 'KILL MANKIND''
- From the diary of Harris and Klebold the the people you feel 'grattitude' to.
You're pathetic.
Rez is just about the only game ive ever played that brought me near to tears. Every time I get in to the atmosphere of Earth on the last level the synesthesia gets just so damn incredible it takes significant effort to stop some tears falling. (The only predictable way of getting that much game joy, bar watching the Halo3 advert. Dont ask me why. Im not a big Halo fan, probably wont even play Halo3. The mixture of epic music and visuals of that advert just get me every time.)
Other than that ive felt a little sad and/or content at a games completion just because theres no where left to go with that particular game. Thats about it.
Though I am one of the apparent minority that do not consider games an art form so I doubt games will ever have the power to bring about tears. As the article says
'Only in a situation where the player has no control, as in a cutscene, would there be room for such outrage.'
Even my Rez example was not strictly gameplay, im barely playing the game at all as those moments come across me. I just absorb the visuals and music. The moment the level finishes, the bosses turn up and you have to start concentrating on gameplay again, all that emotion vanishes.
'You think nVidia will stop manufacturing nForce for AMD chips?'
Less what nvidia will do for AMD more why would AMD use nvidia when it has just spent a metric shit tonne on its own graphics manufacturer.
Its still speculation of course but it wouldnt make much sense to continue using the major rival to the GPU company youve just bought out.
The ATI graphics in the 360 rivals even the most powerful PC's and its still undecided as to which GPU is greater the PS3 or the 360. (I.e. itll be development that matters far more than which GPU is being used.) Hence the fact that PS3 games (admitedly still not complete.) have shown no indication of beating the 360. Though physics, objects, AI etc should be given a heck of a boost if the Cell can get up to speed.
If ATI had botched the job then Nvidia must have as well. Inisightful? More like nonsense.
There is literally one line saying World of Warcraft is a problem, and that was from the point of view that it is a powerful competitor not that its 'crushing the industry'. It wasnt even a question about 'the decline of the PC retail game market'. It was about 'making a name for themselves in the market'. The guy even goes on to repeatedly say how much he loves what Blizzard have done and plays all there games.
The way the articles been presented, and a good chunk of the posts here, makes it sound like hes some resentful whining failure. When actually he sounds fairly positive and eager to try claim back some of the market.
Errr they had more or less conclusive proof that it was a meteorite strike from the substances they found there. (In particular Osmium)
The only problem was lack of crater and that is perfectly explained by midair explosions and the way they work, which was predicted then confirmed by the jupiter impact.
Quite a bit of evidence and everything fits.
Lets have a look at these awesome points.
1. Um how so, music, DVDs, they all deal with there 'product' in the same way because it is a 'product'. They are wrestling for entertainment time but how is that different to just about any competition. You make a good product itll sell well doesnt matter if its media or cardboard boxes. The whole point about building communities has been taken on board since Dizzy on the spectrum. Any series of games builds a community around it and the companies have been milking that for years.
2. This is another problem that has been around since very old machines like the NES every generation boosts the cost of games production cause technology moves faster than programming skills. This isnt broken yet and likely never will be the industry is already adapting with cheap alternatives like the live games, backward compatibility, and the Revolution as a whole.
3. The myth of no inovation. How often is a brand new genre of music or film discovered. Not often. These things typically happen over a period of time in increments so you go back to earlier action films and you have relatively fixed shots, then the shots start shaking and cutting faster, then slow motion, visual effects huge amounts of CG. There wasnt a single film that took a vast step. That stopped happening decades ago. Movie industry is still here still coming out with new things and there is far far more risk with a movie costing anything up to a couple of hundred million to make in comparison to games.
Games tend to innovate in exactly the same way. FPS's will have some new graphic effect, or weapon, or slow motion ala Max Payne. Small relatively safe leaps and you can see them happening even with expensive games today. (See Prey, Oblivion, Battle for middle Earth 2 on 360 etc etc.)
Of course im not saying innovation is wrong, innovation is necessary and important but its not the be all and end all. Serious Sam and Painkiller are two of my best games ever made for the PC they are pretty much rip offs of Doom made nearly a decade before them. Im sure more or less every gamer can say the same about some of there favorite games.
4. Um your lying now arnt you. X-Box 360 games adjusted for inflation are in fact no more expensive than any previous generations. Release price of early megadrive games ranged from 40 to 50 dollars. Release price of 360 games ranges from 50 to 60 dollars more than a decade later. Adjust for inflation based on an average inflation of 2% (I believe itd actually be more but for the sake of argument.) 40 to 50 from 1995 would be roughly 49 to 61. So yeah. Utter rubbish. The only people claiming games are gonna be more pricey is Sony and they are likely just going to reduce the price anyway.
This isnt even mentioning that there are already bargain bins with some of the games and budget games. Games are probably too expensive but its not new and therefore not really the cause of any break down of the industry.
5. No market can expand indefinately but the industry is already beginning to rope in new users. The article answers its own problem. Nintendo are appealing to a wider audience, MS has opened up live, Sony appears to be trying to do absolutely everything ever. (According to there marketing a gajillion times better than everyone else. We'll see Sony. We'll see.) So where exactly is the break here?
Infact where is the break anywhere in this article. Half the points are age old problems the industry has dealt with for years. Other than that there are non problems and problems that are already being dealt with. This is just the usual nonsense that pops up typically after an article has just proven completely different. (25% games sales rise on the same slashdot page as this article claiming the industry is horribly broken. Thats the kind of breaking I want to see happen to my earnings.)
Your just flipping the discrimination around and positively discriminating based on the idea that the X-Box360 is crap, and the Japanese are far superior to everyone else at determining what is good and bad in technology.
Thats as much crap as any cultural examination the previous poster made.
I believe both of you are wrong. The first poster indicated his judgement is based on the fact the Japanese dislike America and therefore American products. You are suggesting the Japanese are superior in there judgements altogether. I do think the Japanese may have some animosity to America but then so do huge chunks of the whole world, including my own country, 360's doing fine here. Its far more likely that the Japanese market is simply a different one. Not better, not worse, just different. All of the games and marketing were not made for this different market. Thats why they failed.
The japanese clearly have a style and genre set they prefer, just like everyone else does. MS didnt cater for it and now they have a hell of an uphill struggle.
In case anyone else has had the same issues. At least some of the downloaded zips confuse the crap out of Windows and WinRAR they simply wont be able to extract them. Explorer will get confused over what the directory structure is doing. WinRAR wont even show you the directory the mov is in. (This may be because my winRAR isnt fully up to date.)
The current winACE will open the file fine though.
As to why im not so sure. For metroid the directory that causes the problems is \\227.mov (explorer reads it as WINDOWS) I can only assume this is because the thing was made on a Unix system and that folder will work on Unix will not work on Windows.
Needless to say there wasnt really any reason to have any folder structure zipped up, let alone a folder that can cause issues. Still its free so cant complain. (Well I can, and have... but you should probably ignore that.)
'even if there was a 50% chance of getting killed, I'd sign up right away'
Easy to say when your typing on a forum.
'Without people taking risks, we would not have anything like the technology that we have today.'
because I disputed that... where exactly? I was very clear in what I said. Avoidable risks. _Avoidable_. Of course risks are a part of exploration neither the poster this began with nor myself have ever denied that fact. In fact we stressed there always would be risks on multiple occaisions...
The whole point of this argument was never, lets not do anything till theres no risk at all. Its, lets not do anything until the risk is minimised as much as possible. Without making things as safe as possible id be willing to bet the resulting accidents and problems would set us back a damn site more than the delays itd take to put whats wrong, right. I really dont understand how people can argue against this point of view.
'Well, I'd say that they could learn from what went wrong, and maybe make it safer for the next group of people to go up, even if they don't fix the problem entirely, it gives the next people a better chance.'
We know something thats wrong already. We know that the foam is still not safe enough, it can be improved. The fact that they have planned for if it goes wrong is proof positive of this. We can already give this set of people a better chance. But hell why bother just fire off them off, who gives a crap if they die? Oh thats right anyone who isnt a complete bastard. Them and every politician who will find ample reason to cut the budget on the space program the moment anything goes wrong.
So in your own words 'please, stop hindering human advancement.' This additional risk has _nothing_ to do with advancing us and everything to do with the slow appearance of the space program. You have two choices
1. Take a gamble with human lives.
2. Take the PR hit involved with a delay.
No real 'hindering' involved here unless something goes wrong. Guess which number that is more likely to happen with... This is politics not advancement and human lives shouldnt be risked on that much.
'And buy a dictionary.'
You shouldnt start a sentence with 'and'. I also believe you ment life not 'like'. Know how much your mistakes bothered me? Not at all.
Dont treat a post on a forum like a professional essay. The typing errors in my posts (and apparently yours as well...) are many and obvious to all who can read... on slashdot. Guess how much I care?
Im sorry did you just pass off giving a shit about human life as being politically correct hokum... Saying that an evil black knight is racist is politically correct hokum. Being against needlessly sending people to there deaths is called, not being a total prick.
Exploration is dangerous and people will get hurt and die but there is one thing that just about explorer has done in the entire history of science and that is to give themselves the best shot. (Which was the whole point of the post you responded to.)
Incidentally this is a far cry from this kind of nonsense where top engineers are being over ruled and arseholes like yourself arnt giving a crap very likely because your not the one who has to sit inside a shuttle that could go horrifically wrong. The pilots signed up for this mission not with the intent of dieing for science they signed up because they want to survive and further science. ITs the responsibility of everyone there to make sure that happens.
Lets look at it coldy though seeing as you appear to not give two shits about anyone. There is absolute zero benefit to anyone if the shuttle goes wrong and in the worst case people die. There is absolutely no reason they shouldnt wait a while to make sure that this has the best chance of working. There is every reason to believe the lead engineer and top safety officials know a metric shit tonne more than the managers and most certainly you or myself. There is every reason to believe that if something does go wrong it will set the entire space program back a massive amount.
Any way you look at it this decision is questionable. I agree that appearance over substance appears to be the way of things thats been proven in the wishy washy way parts of the Iraq war have been handled. Its fairly clear that the choice of sending an unsafe craft up has nothing to do with substance and everything to do with trying to demonstrate how active the space program is regardless of the risk.
Exploration shouldnt be lets fire off as many humans as we can and hopefully something will turn up. Thats more along the lines of comic book super villain or genocidal maniac...
If someone dies because of an avoidable mistake then yes it is a big deal whether someone like you can grasp that or not.
Well for a start off this seemed a little off. Theres 256 times the difference between read and write. This immediately indicates to me that either Sony faked everything its ever shown or this article is making something out to be much worse than it really is.
After reading other posts from what I gather read simply isnt a major requirment and will be barely noticable rather than the doom saying this article claims.
However, there was something that still lingered. He mentioned games looked object sparse (In a previous article, so before this issue ever came up.) and in this article he says 'RSX appears to be limited to setting up 275 Million triangles/second' Now is this connected to the issue of the small read speed and therefore not actually much of a problem at all? Or is this something entirely seperate and an actual debilitating factor?
Im hoping someone with more experience with these things can explain just what this is about.
(Id prefer if people dont respond with 'Its all about the games bitch!'. It no doubt is but im still interested in this from a purely technological point of view.)
Youve tried to be clever, in the process missing most of the points. Bravo.
'Yeah! You know what really pisses me off? The regular episodes of Battlestar Galactica reused many of the same actors, sets, and props from the miniseries. That is so bullshit! Who do these people think they are?'
Well other than being an entirely different media that doesnt even add up. You need to pay actors stage hands script writers the works for each and every episode. Valve do not. They already have everything there in the first place. A far more acurate analogy would be if they took battlestar galactica sliced the episodes up re-edited them together then sold it on DVD for at least as much as the original series was when it was first released. That still sounding fair to you?
'I don't either. They should have re-modeled, re-animated, re-textured and reprogrammed every character, enemy, and scene. They should have come up with a whole new engine while they were at it. Also, all new voice actors. Then the game would cost three times as much as it did and come out two years later. That sounds mighty fine.'
His complaint was that it cost too much. At what point did he say they had redo absolutely everything? Fact is to buy all half life 2 episodes and get essentially a half life 2 expansion it costs at least as much as the original on its release date. Now looking in the game stores around me the expansions are typically half the price of the original. That includes the very good ones.
'Unless you buy it boxed from a retail shop. And what a pain in the arse that is. It's almost like...oh I dunno...like there's some sort of trade off when you buy the game from Steam vs. buying it from store. It's so unfair!'
Steam and online distribution is what valve want to take over the store service. IF you hadnt noticed the original Half Life 2 when not bought over steam was littered with problems it was a disaster. If episodic content takes off over steam dont count on them taking the more expensive route of sticking it in the shops and you can sure as hell say goodbye to taking it back.
'Totally. It's like those...those stupid whatamacallits. The things with words on them? BOOKS! Yeah. When they come out with a new book in a series and it's like a year after the prevous entry in the series. Gawd. Sooo annoying.'
Once again clean over your head. The resulting package of the episodes adds up to one game. It isnt like releasing a series of books its like taking a book tearing it in to chapters and making you wait months inbetween each one. Or to compare it to its namesake itd be like waiting several months inbetween 'episodes' of your favorite TV program.
'Ha ha! What kind of dumbass would play a game just because it provided a rich, immersive experience peppered with engaging characters and sported a slick, newly-updated graphics engine anyway?'
He said sugar coat it... did you read his post at all or were you just looking to try sound really smart. Sugar Coat it as you appear to have missed means sticking something good on the outside to cover up the fact its not so good underneath. As in updated graphics engine that doesnt actually improve much. New character dialogue that doesnt actually say much and rich and immersive that isnt much richer and doenst improve immersion so much. Thats why its sugar coating. Scratch the surface and its same ol same ol.
I dont even entirely agree with much of his post but it had valid points and at the very least didnt warrent the condescending bullshit you just spewed.
Please dont mix violence in games with the debate on games as an art form.
I dont have any issue with the violence in games and the recent tirade of censorship that every other politician is trying to slap on us is minority driven, dangerous, nonsense.
I sure as hell dont think games are an art form though. (And im a tad under the age of 50...)