In particular, a first-person game has a particularly difficult problem to solve if it wants to support local co-op.
Interesting to hear all the technical hurdles expressed. I knew some existed, but I love details.
That said, I recall playing 4-up split screen Golden Eye in the late 90s. It is, without doubt, my favorite shooter of all time. I know that wasn't exactly doing full physics modeling, particle effects and all the other render magic that makes modern games look so good and play so well, but why does that always have to be the goal?
I'd just like to see more effort put into the local end of games. Gamers aren't just young kids any more - Nintendo has proven that with the Wii. But just because we're old doesn't mean we're not interested in chasing our loved ones around an abandoned missile silo with a sniper rifle once in a while. This market exists, this market has money, and none of the big players seem interested in targeting it.
I don't want to be forced into an online experience with the difficulty set at insane (with human opponents), playing the same 10 maps over and over. I want a story. I want a campaign, character development, storytelling. I want to do story-based missions and otherwise play a console game.
My wife likes to play shooters, but she likes to play with me. This is incredibly awesome, but more and more games are making this impossible.
We picked up CoD: Black Ops specifically because it claimed to support cooperative multiplayer. Turns out that the co-op feature only works online. As in, not in your house. I even did research before I bought the game, but every review just drooled all over it and said 'cooperative multiplayer' without further specification.
So we got a single player game that neither of us want to play or we can get murdered in death matches by squealing 12 year olds. Or I could play co-op with some stranger I don't care about. So we just played zombies, which got old pretty quick. I'd say we got about $20 worth of fun for a game that cost $60.
This whole 'build an online community at the expense of all else' bullshit needs to stop. I want to play games with people in my house. It seems the only company who remembers this is Nintendo. So my options are 'games for adults who aren't in your house' or 'games for kids who are in your house' - but that skips an entire group of people who want to play 'games for adults with other adults in the house'. There are a large number of us in this demographic, and we have money to spend.
Apple has much to lose from the advancement of Linux with Google's Droid OS.
A patent like this when validated takes everyone down. Linux, BSD and other open codebases are significantly more visible to these trolls, so they draw fire first - but something as vague as this hits everyone.
Apple has a significant investment in open code that would likely be found in violation of this patent, so why on earth would they try to destroy it? So does Microsoft. And IBM, Oracle and many, many other companies with very deep pockets. This is, effectively, mutually assured destruction for them.
The only type of person who stands to benefit is a patent troll firing off pot shots from a safe distance. Hey! What do you know!
By setting the browser to enable plug-ins on demand, unwanted flash ads appear as clickable boxes, and and flash object in a page can be loaded by clicking it.
Since nobody is likely to rewrite the whole internet to exclude flash (espeically since there are old browsers that practically require flash) it's really nice to be able to have flash when you need it.
But several of the big players are doing exactly that. If you play along with the people that continue to insist on flash by having your browser report that you do, in fact, have it installed (which is how those 'click to load' mechanisms work) then they will keep producing content in flash.
Or you can remove the plugin entirely and be pleasantly surprised at how many sites will serve up alternate non-flash content if your browser reports that it doesn't have it installed.
I've disabled it entirely on my system, and I don't really miss it. The web feels much quicker, I rarely miss out on content - and if I run into something that requires Flash, I'll fire up Chrome which at least sandboxes the monstrosity.
This is always something I like to bring up whenever I'm in a discussion about privacy. Invariably, someone claims that the fact that we're losing privacy is some new development, when in fact the idea of having privacy is a new development in our civilization. It takes anonymity in order to have privacy, and you can't have anonymity unless you have a large enough population to be lost in the noise. In the villages of yore, everyone knew who the whore was.
I think more accurately the privacy discussion of today revolves around a disparity of information. There is an exempt class of people that is not watched, and that's simply not fair.
For your item #3 -- "doing nothing to encourage bright young minds" -- except for the honors courses. And the accelerated courses. And the IQ tests that can get you in to them.
Honors and accelerated are not the same thing as self-paced learning. In the context of my story, the point I was attempting to illustrate was the glorious year I spent in a self-paced environment and provide a counter example to the post I was quoting. If there had been genuine self paced study available at my school, I probably would have done better than 'smart, but needs to learn discipline: B+'. Perhaps I made the point poorly.
I genuinely feel lucky to have had the opportunity to take those courses. Regrettably, not every district has the resources to offer them.
When smarter students becomes bored, they too become frustrated and learn ways to play the courseware. That rapidly supplants learning the material.
So, the smarter student becoming bored due to learning the material rapidly which causes them to no longer learn the material?
When I was in 3rd grade, my teacher thought I was slow because I wasn't doing the material provided. It was recommended I undergo psychiatric testing. Testing concluded that I was bored out of my skull and just wasn't interested in doing 5 pages worth of division problems every night after grasping the concept after a day.
The next year, my parents put me in a small private school that provided self-paced learning. It was the single best academic experience of my life, and I gobbled up the curriculum through the 7th grade level - in all subjects. At no point did I ever become bored with the material as it was always new and interesting to me.
Regrettably, my parents couldn't afford to keep that up, so it was back to public schools for 5th grade. My parents tried to get me into the accelerated classes, but my teacher was convinced I should instead be in with the remedial. He insisted I be IQ tested. I did much better than he expected and got in.
I took honors classes my first year in high school, then decided to 'take it easy' my sophomore year with regular courses. I did abysmally for a semester and ended up having to do summer school to make up for a failed term of history. I immediately recognized the pattern and switched back to honors programs at the semester.
From this experience I learned a few things:
- If I'm not challenged, my interest drops like a stone.
- Bored smart students are indistinguishable from remedial students to a teacher with 30+ students in the class.
- Modern public schools are doing nothing to encourage bright young minds.
- And more philosophically, that the world is full of shitty, mundane things you just have to do even if they're pointless and inane. Public school is actually really good at teaching this, but in this aspect I was a terrible student.
Re:And just as important.
on
Happy Pi Day
·
· Score: 1
This "holiday", which does not exist on any calendar...seems sexist and homophobic. Please to be explaining why it is not heterocentric, sir.
All men, no matter their sexual preference - be it straight, gay or other - like BJs. That's pretty much as far from homophobic you can get.
Silly. People don't buy houses with money any more. They buy houses with debt.
Even if I had the cash on hand, I'd have to look very hard at financing a mortgage in the current economy. A fixed 4% interest rate has a very good chance of beating inflation over 30 years.
The Cider port of Dragon Age 1 was one of the best ports I've ever played (including native code ports). Honestly: you cannot tell it's a Cider ported game unless you see the "cider" process in the Activity Monitor -- it was exceptional.
Thanks for sharing that. Every Cider port I've ever seen has been a raging disaster. It's nice to know that it's the process and not the tool causing it. Now, if only they had a demo so I could see for myself if it was worth plunking down $60...
This alone is one of the more impressive elements of the release.
OK - after digging around a bit more, not only is there no OS X demo available but the game itself is apparently a Cider port and not an actual cross platform game. For $60. Sorry, not happening.
This alone is one of the more impressive elements of the release.
Though for some reason the only demo I appear to be able to download is the.exe. Nowhere on the demo page does it talk about what specs or platform are necessary to actually play the demo.
not just specific Apple sanctioned ones like the first iPad (at 480p).
For the record, video out wasn't locked down to Apple-only at all. You did, however, have to write code specifically to target an external screen if one was present.
Yes, there are dangerous patients who think they know more than doctors do. There are also patients who spot things that doctors ignore because the doctors are used to seeing something else. A patient can be involved in their own medical care without being pushy and a 'know-it-all'.
There is also a class of people called 'nerds' who really dig stuff like seeing a CT scan of their head. Many of them, in fact, frequent this site.
if i recall... they were also accused of the very same thing with usb on the original iMac in 1998. that really turned out dud decision...
I have a box full of various adapters that Apple forces me to buy every time they change display interconnect to the 'next best thing'. Between the computers changing ports and the display manufacturers trying to keep up, the permutations can become large. Those adapters are $25 each from Apple.
On the other hand, I can still plug in the same USB devices I did from 1998.
Also, I've never seen a TV that didn't spit out 5.1 audio from its digital audio output
Oh, it'll spit out 5.1 - for anything that came in on a channel other than HDMI. But if it came in encrypted over an HDMI connection, it forcibly down samples to 2 channel stereo. My DVD player worked fine in 5.1, the BluRay was 2 channel.
This basically sums up the frustration of the modern law abiding A/V nerd. I can't count the number of times I've wanted to do something with equipment I own using media I paid for and been thwarted because 'I might be a pirate'.
MythTV? Tried that. Loved it until I was forced into the digital world by the cable company. Everything needed to be re-engineered and there were complicated cards that may or may not work and may or may not be supported by the cable co. I could've wrestled through it, upgrading hardware and spending hours (again) getting things working - until the next time the cable company forced a change. Because I might be a pirate.
New HD Television? I plan my purchases and already owned a receiver with two digital audio channels. Since all my video sources were HDMI, the obvious solution here is to run everything to the TV and run a single audio out from the TV to the receiver. Fewer remotes, fewer wires, better Wife Acceptance Factor. Nope. The TV down samples everything that comes out the digital audio out jack to 2 channel stereo*. Instead I have to run all my sources to my receiver that only has 2 digital inputs. Or upgrade the receiver. Because I might be a pirate
BluRay Player? It came as a bundle when I purchased my TV and was effectively free. Cool, I'll check that out. This has been the absolute worst playback device I've ever seen. Boot times are extreme. Menus are sluggish. Firmware updates are a necessity if you want to play any recent releases. Because I might be a pirate.
At every turn where you're blocked from doing something, the only solution is to upgrade your entire chain of hardware - and you still likely won't be able to do what you want. In the meantime, the pirates don't have to worry about any of this shit. It's pretty plain to me that the industry doesn't actually care about piracy, but instead is trying to drive purchases of new hardware and media.
* Incidentally, what's the point of a digital audio out if the only thing that ever comes out of it is 2 channel stereo?
What truth? He engaged in espionage against the United States - that isn't in dispute. Why not throw the book at him?
Actually, it is very much in dispute. And in this country, when there is dispute between the accuser and the accused, we have a trial. We wouldn't just disappear someone to a secret prison without a fair trial, right?
Hm, maybe he should worry about that whole extradition issue.
Examples: Fusion reactor is an engineering / financial problem. An antimatter powered star trek warp drive is a flight of fancy. Both are currently impossible but they are two very different classes of impossible.
How far back do we need to go before 'Fusion Reactor' was classed as 'Flight of Fancy'?
Which means it is not and cannot be science. Unless someone comes up with a way to test the "multiverse" theory, it is nothing more than a mental exercise.
He actually addressed this when he was on Colbert the other night. His point is that the maths indicate that this may be true, but that there is no way to scientifically prove it given current technology and understanding. This is similar to the fact that several aspects of Einstein's theories were indicated via math but not verifiable via experimentation. Einstein didn't even believe them. They were ultimately proven true as technology advanced to the point that the relevant experiments became possible.
The premise of his position is simply that math, while ultimately a mental exercise, can help guild the focus of scientific experimentation by indicating possibility. That's not really a controversial position in and of itself.
What the media are doing with this, on the other hand, is pretty much par for the course in science reporting.
Apple has two price tiers for repair parts - 'exchange' and 'stock'. A stock part is basically full retail. An exchange part is one where you give them the bad one, they give you a good one, and you get a significant price break - usually around 50%. It's your choice, but it's not really offered up directly to customers.
While it's cool that you went to a school that provided such a rich and interesting IT curriculum, none of the things you mentioned are actually Computer Science. You're proving the point of the article, in fact.
If they are acting as expected that box contains some withering 20-page EULA that will land yer behind in a sling if you even breathe a word of the goodies contained therein.
I've never seen the courts side in favor of an EULA - but I have seen them side based on DMCA violations (see Blizzard). They can scream all they want in the EULA and until I see a court uphold one, I don't consider them to be a barrier to reverse engineering the signal that comes out of the cable. Given that DMCA only applies to content protection - and the content is mine - I don't see the DMCA becoming involved.
I understood that this is an intelligent peripheral which processes the inputs from the cameras into something the '360 can use as well as providing feeds of the camera images... Reverse-engineering on steroids will be required to crack that...
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting to hear all the technical hurdles expressed. I knew some existed, but I love details.
That said, I recall playing 4-up split screen Golden Eye in the late 90s. It is, without doubt, my favorite shooter of all time. I know that wasn't exactly doing full physics modeling, particle effects and all the other render magic that makes modern games look so good and play so well, but why does that always have to be the goal?
I'd just like to see more effort put into the local end of games. Gamers aren't just young kids any more - Nintendo has proven that with the Wii. But just because we're old doesn't mean we're not interested in chasing our loved ones around an abandoned missile silo with a sniper rifle once in a while. This market exists, this market has money, and none of the big players seem interested in targeting it.
My wife likes to play shooters, but she likes to play with me. This is incredibly awesome, but more and more games are making this impossible.
We picked up CoD: Black Ops specifically because it claimed to support cooperative multiplayer. Turns out that the co-op feature only works online. As in, not in your house. I even did research before I bought the game, but every review just drooled all over it and said 'cooperative multiplayer' without further specification.
So we got a single player game that neither of us want to play or we can get murdered in death matches by squealing 12 year olds. Or I could play co-op with some stranger I don't care about. So we just played zombies, which got old pretty quick. I'd say we got about $20 worth of fun for a game that cost $60.
This whole 'build an online community at the expense of all else' bullshit needs to stop. I want to play games with people in my house. It seems the only company who remembers this is Nintendo. So my options are 'games for adults who aren't in your house' or 'games for kids who are in your house' - but that skips an entire group of people who want to play 'games for adults with other adults in the house'. There are a large number of us in this demographic, and we have money to spend.
A patent like this when validated takes everyone down. Linux, BSD and other open codebases are significantly more visible to these trolls, so they draw fire first - but something as vague as this hits everyone.
Apple has a significant investment in open code that would likely be found in violation of this patent, so why on earth would they try to destroy it? So does Microsoft. And IBM, Oracle and many, many other companies with very deep pockets. This is, effectively, mutually assured destruction for them.
The only type of person who stands to benefit is a patent troll firing off pot shots from a safe distance. Hey! What do you know!
But several of the big players are doing exactly that. If you play along with the people that continue to insist on flash by having your browser report that you do, in fact, have it installed (which is how those 'click to load' mechanisms work) then they will keep producing content in flash.
Or you can remove the plugin entirely and be pleasantly surprised at how many sites will serve up alternate non-flash content if your browser reports that it doesn't have it installed.
I've disabled it entirely on my system, and I don't really miss it. The web feels much quicker, I rarely miss out on content - and if I run into something that requires Flash, I'll fire up Chrome which at least sandboxes the monstrosity.
This is always something I like to bring up whenever I'm in a discussion about privacy. Invariably, someone claims that the fact that we're losing privacy is some new development, when in fact the idea of having privacy is a new development in our civilization. It takes anonymity in order to have privacy, and you can't have anonymity unless you have a large enough population to be lost in the noise. In the villages of yore, everyone knew who the whore was.
I think more accurately the privacy discussion of today revolves around a disparity of information. There is an exempt class of people that is not watched, and that's simply not fair.
I don't know - it sure sounds like you're getting fucked at 30k feet to me...
Honors and accelerated are not the same thing as self-paced learning. In the context of my story, the point I was attempting to illustrate was the glorious year I spent in a self-paced environment and provide a counter example to the post I was quoting. If there had been genuine self paced study available at my school, I probably would have done better than 'smart, but needs to learn discipline: B+'. Perhaps I made the point poorly.
I genuinely feel lucky to have had the opportunity to take those courses. Regrettably, not every district has the resources to offer them.
So, the smarter student becoming bored due to learning the material rapidly which causes them to no longer learn the material?
When I was in 3rd grade, my teacher thought I was slow because I wasn't doing the material provided. It was recommended I undergo psychiatric testing. Testing concluded that I was bored out of my skull and just wasn't interested in doing 5 pages worth of division problems every night after grasping the concept after a day.
The next year, my parents put me in a small private school that provided self-paced learning. It was the single best academic experience of my life, and I gobbled up the curriculum through the 7th grade level - in all subjects. At no point did I ever become bored with the material as it was always new and interesting to me.
Regrettably, my parents couldn't afford to keep that up, so it was back to public schools for 5th grade. My parents tried to get me into the accelerated classes, but my teacher was convinced I should instead be in with the remedial. He insisted I be IQ tested. I did much better than he expected and got in.
I took honors classes my first year in high school, then decided to 'take it easy' my sophomore year with regular courses. I did abysmally for a semester and ended up having to do summer school to make up for a failed term of history. I immediately recognized the pattern and switched back to honors programs at the semester.
From this experience I learned a few things:
All men, no matter their sexual preference - be it straight, gay or other - like BJs. That's pretty much as far from homophobic you can get.
Unless you meant the steak.
Even if I had the cash on hand, I'd have to look very hard at financing a mortgage in the current economy. A fixed 4% interest rate has a very good chance of beating inflation over 30 years.
Thanks for sharing that. Every Cider port I've ever seen has been a raging disaster. It's nice to know that it's the process and not the tool causing it. Now, if only they had a demo so I could see for myself if it was worth plunking down $60...
OK - after digging around a bit more, not only is there no OS X demo available but the game itself is apparently a Cider port and not an actual cross platform game. For $60. Sorry, not happening.
Though for some reason the only demo I appear to be able to download is the .exe. Nowhere on the demo page does it talk about what specs or platform are necessary to actually play the demo.
For the record, video out wasn't locked down to Apple-only at all. You did, however, have to write code specifically to target an external screen if one was present.
There is also a class of people called 'nerds' who really dig stuff like seeing a CT scan of their head. Many of them, in fact, frequent this site.
I have a box full of various adapters that Apple forces me to buy every time they change display interconnect to the 'next best thing'. Between the computers changing ports and the display manufacturers trying to keep up, the permutations can become large. Those adapters are $25 each from Apple.
On the other hand, I can still plug in the same USB devices I did from 1998.
People have a legitimate gripe here.
Oh, it'll spit out 5.1 - for anything that came in on a channel other than HDMI. But if it came in encrypted over an HDMI connection, it forcibly down samples to 2 channel stereo. My DVD player worked fine in 5.1, the BluRay was 2 channel.
You'll find this is common.
This basically sums up the frustration of the modern law abiding A/V nerd. I can't count the number of times I've wanted to do something with equipment I own using media I paid for and been thwarted because 'I might be a pirate'.
MythTV? Tried that. Loved it until I was forced into the digital world by the cable company. Everything needed to be re-engineered and there were complicated cards that may or may not work and may or may not be supported by the cable co. I could've wrestled through it, upgrading hardware and spending hours (again) getting things working - until the next time the cable company forced a change. Because I might be a pirate.
New HD Television? I plan my purchases and already owned a receiver with two digital audio channels. Since all my video sources were HDMI, the obvious solution here is to run everything to the TV and run a single audio out from the TV to the receiver. Fewer remotes, fewer wires, better Wife Acceptance Factor. Nope. The TV down samples everything that comes out the digital audio out jack to 2 channel stereo*. Instead I have to run all my sources to my receiver that only has 2 digital inputs. Or upgrade the receiver. Because I might be a pirate
BluRay Player? It came as a bundle when I purchased my TV and was effectively free. Cool, I'll check that out. This has been the absolute worst playback device I've ever seen. Boot times are extreme. Menus are sluggish. Firmware updates are a necessity if you want to play any recent releases. Because I might be a pirate.
At every turn where you're blocked from doing something, the only solution is to upgrade your entire chain of hardware - and you still likely won't be able to do what you want. In the meantime, the pirates don't have to worry about any of this shit. It's pretty plain to me that the industry doesn't actually care about piracy, but instead is trying to drive purchases of new hardware and media.
* Incidentally, what's the point of a digital audio out if the only thing that ever comes out of it is 2 channel stereo?
Actually, it is very much in dispute. And in this country, when there is dispute between the accuser and the accused, we have a trial. We wouldn't just disappear someone to a secret prison without a fair trial, right?
Hm, maybe he should worry about that whole extradition issue.
How far back do we need to go before 'Fusion Reactor' was classed as 'Flight of Fancy'?
He actually addressed this when he was on Colbert the other night. His point is that the maths indicate that this may be true, but that there is no way to scientifically prove it given current technology and understanding. This is similar to the fact that several aspects of Einstein's theories were indicated via math but not verifiable via experimentation. Einstein didn't even believe them. They were ultimately proven true as technology advanced to the point that the relevant experiments became possible.
The premise of his position is simply that math, while ultimately a mental exercise, can help guild the focus of scientific experimentation by indicating possibility. That's not really a controversial position in and of itself.
What the media are doing with this, on the other hand, is pretty much par for the course in science reporting.
It's been going on much longer than that. Film and tape are simply modern day Palimpsests.
Apple has two price tiers for repair parts - 'exchange' and 'stock'. A stock part is basically full retail. An exchange part is one where you give them the bad one, they give you a good one, and you get a significant price break - usually around 50%. It's your choice, but it's not really offered up directly to customers.
While it's cool that you went to a school that provided such a rich and interesting IT curriculum, none of the things you mentioned are actually Computer Science. You're proving the point of the article, in fact.
I've never seen the courts side in favor of an EULA - but I have seen them side based on DMCA violations (see Blizzard). They can scream all they want in the EULA and until I see a court uphold one, I don't consider them to be a barrier to reverse engineering the signal that comes out of the cable. Given that DMCA only applies to content protection - and the content is mine - I don't see the DMCA becoming involved.
No, it'll likely be very difficult. But legal.