It is a protest against the economic disparity in the USA; a protest against the top 1% that controls 99% of the wealth on this country. All of the media outlets are owned by the 1% that the protest is against. Why would anyone give airtime to people protesting against them?
Asimov wasn't alone. Several authors have put forth the concept (my favorite is actually "Cleology", introduced in "In the Country of the Blind" by Michael Flynn, complete with some graphs and charts of historical cyclical data that projected (at the time of the book's writing) future events that have turned out to be surprisingly accurate (at the time of this writing)).
The entire concept of studying history can be summed up in the phrase "Those who do not recall history are doomed to repeat it" - in other words, we need to know what mistakes we have made in order to avoid making them again.
My favorite is Melchizedek from Battle Angel Alita by Yukito Kishiro. Melchizedek is an MBC that can predict trends from arbitrary datasets. At first it is used for weather forecasting, but as time progresses the system is tasked with making predictions from other data. Soon it is monitoring economic, political, and criminal trends, and every decision made by human administrators is first run by Melchizedek to see if the predicted outcome is favorable. Eventually the entire government is turned over to Melchizedek; The system is no longer making predictions, but rather making policy. In the end the system decides that humans are too mentally weak and emotionally fragile for its needs and replaces them all with genetically engineered cybernetic constructs.
Pure-strain Humans are kept around to provide a source of cheap replacement parts for cyborgs, but anything with an organic brain instead of a chip is not considered a higher order lifeform.
Try Global Agenda. It is a sci fi mmo but it uses shooter mechanics where you have to aim your weapon at the enemy and dodge fire, not tab target nonsense where you facetank things.
There were hundreds of successful commercial dungeon exploration games that used procedural generation before Diablo. For example TSR's Dungeon Hack, a graphical roguelike which won game of the year from several publications in 1994, two years before Diablo was released.
The rest of your statements are also wrong. Dune II is the first RTS game to feature a tech tree in 1992, two years before Warcraft. Dune II's tech tree was copied by Blizzard for Warcraft and used in Diablo 2 when Blizzard began looking at merging its RTS and RPG settings; World of Warcraft is the result.
So the most innovative feature of Diablo was something Blizzard copied off a game of the year release, and the most innovative feature of Warcraft was something blizzard copied off a different game of the year release.
Seems to me the only thing Blizzard innovates is copying other games well...
You can do server side programming in Lua with Keppler.
Lua has ruined programming for me. It has shown me that everything is an abstraction, the industry is inundated with arbitrary conventions, and the only limitations are self imposed. Lua is the last programming language I ever want to learn.
I have an open source project that is basically like flash player, but with lua instead of actionscript. Oh and fullscreen 3d with 100k triangles at 60 frames per second, hardware shaders. and networking support.
Playstation Home is pretty close to being a mainstream corporate version of Second Life. It is a cyberspace where you are free to create anything you want, as long as you pay Sony enough money.
I disagree. In the future those advances will be merged with the real world. Augmented reality will bridge the gap in the machine interface; soldiers will be able to see navpoints overlayed on their heads up displays, navpoints placed by commanders who are observing the situation as realtime generated 3d environment that they can interact with. Environments generated on the fly using satalite data, first person camera from troops, geological surveys, the location and positional data of every object ever manufactured tracked via it's rfid barcode, the blueprints of every building. You will be able to see the virtual representation of the real world assets and be able to interact with them, as well as see and interact virtual representations of metaverse assets in the real world.
We are heading towards the day when we will be playing Command and Conquer using real soldiers, on Battlefield Google Earth.
Sometimes it works. Battlezone 2000 was an entirely different genre then the original, but the game was one of the most innovative games of its times...
For real! I play oldschool tabletop wargames with a group that includes several accountants and lawyers. The accountants play with a calculator in one hand and a pencil in the other, and will never move any of their units unless the math first shows the outcome is statistically in their favor. The lawyers bring a pile of rulebooks filled with stickynotes, paragraphs highlighted in various colors and underlined in pen.... well let's just say they give new meaning to the phrase "rules lawyers".
Funnily enough, as a computer programmer I only do well if first devise an intricate battleplan detailing the precise actions of all of my units for the entire duration of the battle, including flow charts with contingency matrices. Then I rigidly adhere to my premade decisions, tracking unit locations and performance statistics during the battle, along with taking notes for the next revision...
>Are you so uninformed that I need to point out that 9/11 was not Bush's idea?
"Many of Bush's inner circle are members of Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative think-tank that promotes an ideology of total U.S. world domination through the use of force. Back in 1998, PNAC sent an open letter to President Clinton urging his administration to implement a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This letter was signed by Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton and Richard Perle. These men, along with fellow PNAC members Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby, were the primary architects of the Iraq war 5 years later. In 2000, PNAC produced a document entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century. The plan outlined how the US should go about taking military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein is in power."
9/11 might not have been Bush's idea but the war certainly was on his agenda.
>PS3 sales have been inflated by the fact that it was the best value BluRay Player on the market for years.
Just like how the ps2 was the best value dvd player for years, and the ps1 was the best value cd player on the market for years.
Remember what we were using before the ps1? cartridges. The ps3 is going to bury the 360 the same way the ps2 buried the xbox.
>a convincing argument based on actual user data why the ribbon is a better UI.
That's the problem right there. Microsoft's products are used by idiots. If you get a big group of idiots together and designed a drool proof interface for them to use then the something like the ribbon with big fischer price buttons on it would be perfect.
I'm pretty sure nintendo started out making custom playing cards for yakuzza crime bosses, and then branched out into gambling and prostitution before they started making consumer electronics... not sure they get to qualify as less evil then anyone. Sony's current management might be slightly misguided, but no one at Sony has ever literally whored people out for larger profit margins.
The ps3 is the first gaming console I have ever owned that has earned a place in my component cabinet, instead of being relegated to a drawer under the entertainment center.
>Fallout on the other hand took a while to finish but you could go back and replay it making different choices and a different style.
I finished the first fallout in enough time to take it back to the store and trade it in for something else. (yeah they used to let you do that.) The 2nd fallout could be finished in under an hour if you walk from the start zone to the hidden base, sneak in through the back door and steal power armor and a plasma cannon.
The transmeta tablet I had back in 2001 had all those things too, except you didn't have to jailbreak it. Getting excited over a tablet computer is like getting excited over a 2 button mouse.
I hate to double post, but I would like to point out that the megatextures in et:qw are around 500 megs each compressed. That is just the textures, not including any geometry. At that size it is quite prohibitive for the community to store and transfer mods... wolf:et maps were 10 to 20 megs in size and could be downloaded while you waited in que for the match to begin.
Rage is not the first game with megatexturing. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars uses an enhanced version of ID Tech4 with megatexture support. There are custom maps but the only options are for the ground to look like shit, or to use one of the megatextures that come with the default maps. As a result the modding community for ET:QW is almost non-existent.
Slashdot Mirror
It is a protest against the economic disparity in the USA; a protest against the top 1% that controls 99% of the wealth on this country. All of the media outlets are owned by the 1% that the protest is against. Why would anyone give airtime to people protesting against them?
Asimov wasn't alone. Several authors have put forth the concept (my favorite is actually "Cleology", introduced in "In the Country of the Blind" by Michael Flynn, complete with some graphs and charts of historical cyclical data that projected (at the time of the book's writing) future events that have turned out to be surprisingly accurate (at the time of this writing)).
The entire concept of studying history can be summed up in the phrase "Those who do not recall history are doomed to repeat it" - in other words, we need to know what mistakes we have made in order to avoid making them again.
My favorite is Melchizedek from Battle Angel Alita by Yukito Kishiro. Melchizedek is an MBC that can predict trends from arbitrary datasets. At first it is used for weather forecasting, but as time progresses the system is tasked with making predictions from other data. Soon it is monitoring economic, political, and criminal trends, and every decision made by human administrators is first run by Melchizedek to see if the predicted outcome is favorable. Eventually the entire government is turned over to Melchizedek; The system is no longer making predictions, but rather making policy. In the end the system decides that humans are too mentally weak and emotionally fragile for its needs and replaces them all with genetically engineered cybernetic constructs.
Pure-strain Humans are kept around to provide a source of cheap replacement parts for cyborgs, but anything with an organic brain instead of a chip is not considered a higher order lifeform.
Try Global Agenda. It is a sci fi mmo but it uses shooter mechanics where you have to aim your weapon at the enemy and dodge fire, not tab target nonsense where you facetank things.
There were hundreds of successful commercial dungeon exploration games that used procedural generation before Diablo. For example TSR's Dungeon Hack, a graphical roguelike which won game of the year from several publications in 1994, two years before Diablo was released.
The rest of your statements are also wrong. Dune II is the first RTS game to feature a tech tree in 1992, two years before Warcraft. Dune II's tech tree was copied by Blizzard for Warcraft and used in Diablo 2 when Blizzard began looking at merging its RTS and RPG settings; World of Warcraft is the result.
So the most innovative feature of Diablo was something Blizzard copied off a game of the year release, and the most innovative feature of Warcraft was something blizzard copied off a different game of the year release.
Seems to me the only thing Blizzard innovates is copying other games well...
Except its not. KOTOR had story driven quests and a deep plot. TOR is a hack and slash WOW clone.
You can do server side programming in Lua with Keppler.
Lua has ruined programming for me. It has shown me that everything is an abstraction, the industry is inundated with arbitrary conventions, and the only limitations are self imposed. Lua is the last programming language I ever want to learn.
I have an open source project that is basically like flash player, but with lua instead of actionscript. Oh and fullscreen 3d with 100k triangles at 60 frames per second, hardware shaders. and networking support.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xenosengine/
Playstation Home is pretty close to being a mainstream corporate version of Second Life. It is a cyberspace where you are free to create anything you want, as long as you pay Sony enough money.
I disagree. In the future those advances will be merged with the real world. Augmented reality will bridge the gap in the machine interface; soldiers will be able to see navpoints overlayed on their heads up displays, navpoints placed by commanders who are observing the situation as realtime generated 3d environment that they can interact with. Environments generated on the fly using satalite data, first person camera from troops, geological surveys, the location and positional data of every object ever manufactured tracked via it's rfid barcode, the blueprints of every building. You will be able to see the virtual representation of the real world assets and be able to interact with them, as well as see and interact virtual representations of metaverse assets in the real world.
We are heading towards the day when we will be playing Command and Conquer using real soldiers, on Battlefield Google Earth.
The Star Wars Christmas Special is worth keeping alive, just to remind people just how bad Star Wars can be.
Sometimes it works. Battlezone 2000 was an entirely different genre then the original, but the game was one of the most innovative games of its times...
I normally run all my games in fullscreen...
For real! I play oldschool tabletop wargames with a group that includes several accountants and lawyers. The accountants play with a calculator in one hand and a pencil in the other, and will never move any of their units unless the math first shows the outcome is statistically in their favor. The lawyers bring a pile of rulebooks filled with stickynotes, paragraphs highlighted in various colors and underlined in pen.... well let's just say they give new meaning to the phrase "rules lawyers".
Funnily enough, as a computer programmer I only do well if first devise an intricate battleplan detailing the precise actions of all of my units for the entire duration of the battle, including flow charts with contingency matrices. Then I rigidly adhere to my premade decisions, tracking unit locations and performance statistics during the battle, along with taking notes for the next revision...
>Are you so uninformed that I need to point out that 9/11 was not Bush's idea?
"Many of Bush's inner circle are members of Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative think-tank that promotes an ideology of total U.S. world domination through the use of force. Back in 1998, PNAC sent an open letter to President Clinton urging his administration to implement a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This letter was signed by Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton and Richard Perle. These men, along with fellow PNAC members Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby, were the primary architects of the Iraq war 5 years later. In 2000, PNAC produced a document entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century. The plan outlined how the US should go about taking military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein is in power."
9/11 might not have been Bush's idea but the war certainly was on his agenda.
>PS3 sales have been inflated by the fact that it was the best value BluRay Player on the market for years.
Just like how the ps2 was the best value dvd player for years, and the ps1 was the best value cd player on the market for years. Remember what we were using before the ps1? cartridges. The ps3 is going to bury the 360 the same way the ps2 buried the xbox.
I'm sorry but the cake is in another castle...
>a convincing argument based on actual user data why the ribbon is a better UI.
That's the problem right there. Microsoft's products are used by idiots. If you get a big group of idiots together and designed a drool proof interface for them to use then the something like the ribbon with big fischer price buttons on it would be perfect.
> XBox. The first XBox didn't make a profit but the 360 looks like it finally has.
It made so much profit they can afford to give one away with every new windows pc.
HR is a prequel. The main character is an old school cyber aug, not a nano aug like the dentons.
I'm pretty sure nintendo started out making custom playing cards for yakuzza crime bosses, and then branched out into gambling and prostitution before they started making consumer electronics... not sure they get to qualify as less evil then anyone. Sony's current management might be slightly misguided, but no one at Sony has ever literally whored people out for larger profit margins.
The ps3 is the first gaming console I have ever owned that has earned a place in my component cabinet, instead of being relegated to a drawer under the entertainment center.
>Fallout on the other hand took a while to finish but you could go back and replay it making different choices and a different style.
I finished the first fallout in enough time to take it back to the store and trade it in for something else. (yeah they used to let you do that.) The 2nd fallout could be finished in under an hour if you walk from the start zone to the hidden base, sneak in through the back door and steal power armor and a plasma cannon.
The transmeta tablet I had back in 2001 had all those things too, except you didn't have to jailbreak it. Getting excited over a tablet computer is like getting excited over a 2 button mouse.
"Super Cool Really Original Leveling & Looting Simulator"
I hate to double post, but I would like to point out that the megatextures in et:qw are around 500 megs each compressed. That is just the textures, not including any geometry. At that size it is quite prohibitive for the community to store and transfer mods... wolf:et maps were 10 to 20 megs in size and could be downloaded while you waited in que for the match to begin.
Rage is not the first game with megatexturing. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars uses an enhanced version of ID Tech4 with megatexture support. There are custom maps but the only options are for the ground to look like shit, or to use one of the megatextures that come with the default maps. As a result the modding community for ET:QW is almost non-existent.