If ruggedness is your concern, at a price such as this, then consider this tank of a laptop.
Full magnesium alloy case, shock-mounted hard drive, Windows XP, handwriting functions, vibration and drop-shock resistant, moisture/dust resistant LCD, keyboard and, touchpad protected by a replaceable screen film.
Sounds fun! But what would pictures of musty old scrolls we've already probably gotten past the need of do? If it were me, I'd instead try to stop the fire and/or spread the knowledge so we have an altered history of not having to relearn all that stuff and possibly end up even more advanced that we currently are because we spent time on newer things.
Underlying any symmetrical object, such as a sphere, is a Lie group. Balls, cylinders or cones are familiar examples of symmetric three-dimensional objects. Today's feat rests on the drive by mathematicians to study symmetries in higher dimensions. E8 is the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional. E8 itself is 248-dimensional. Ha! Take that, 11-dimensional Supergravity SuperString M-Theory!
Two words: Summer Jobs. Kids who can't afford to upgrade very often are going to make huge leaps, but only when they have the money to do so. Many of them probably saw the awesome lineup coming for the fall and set about saving up during their summer job to update their systems.
As much as I would like to see it happen, there actually are technical challenges to just straight getting Direct3D 10 on XP. While we certainly now know that it is possible to see the same pretty graphics, Direct3D 10 itself is not a possibility on XP without major overhauls. Shiny DirectX 10 Graphics you get from Direct3D 10 are, but not Direct3D 10 itself, since Microsoft has zero incentive to do the kind of work necessary to get it to work on XP, no matter how small Vista usage is. This Beyond3D article explains why.
Google my pseudonym and anything written by me is obscured in a sea of fanfics, fanpics, and completly unrelated person's posting information. Type my real name into google and you'll find 3 entries relating to me: two of which are useful but could have been found before the Internet. Nothing has changed; only the speed of things have changed. If someone really wishes to find me, they would, but the majority of the information would come from offline. Preserving anonmity is still a keystone of the freedom of privacy; whether you choose to maintain it or not is you own business.
I take it you've never had a sib walk in an "Oops, I pulled out the power/controller plug" or start messing with the TV remote control while you were playing? I figured that'd be a pretty big reason not to include pickup and play Co-op.
During the initial stages of development, we'd made it so that the person assisting the main player was able to do things like shake the Wii Remote to make Mario spin or make him jump by pressing A, but we ended up taking those features out because it lent itself to negative play and made play difficult.
Wow, two different articles from the same department, that's like a record considering most of the time we get the same article from two different departments! Seriously* I've heard of companies that seem constantly undergoing a reorg, but Slashdot's restructuring is just ridiculous!
*I'm as serious as there is a lack of sarcasm in this sentence.
Moral Statute Machine: PHAEDRU5's grandmother, you are fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.
Moral Statute Machine: Your repeated violation of the Verbal Morality Statute, code 777, has caused me to notify the San Angeles^W^W Westminster Police Department. Please remain where you are for your reprimand.
I think the secret in life is to surround yourself with people smarter than you. That definitely applies to programming. --Tim Schafer Now there's a quote that belongs on the quotes bar at the bottom of Slashdot!
I totally agree, thankfully the same time the Orange Box came out, I was introduced to perhaps the only honest reviewer/editorial I've ever seen. Plus he's hilarious to boot! There's no need for a score, or a summary, its an editorial review that gets it point across, makes positive and negative game commentary and social commentary and manages to deliver it in a delightfully hilarious fashion.
His Halo 3 review was honest, critical, and has a poignant comment or two on the very subject of broken game reviews.
But he was only a bit more kind to the Orange Box, while still full of commentary (except on portal) it all had a pretty positive overall feel, much more so that Halo 3.
Speaking to social commentary... well, I'll just link the Medal Of Honor:Airborn review and leave it at that!
This Prius had a more spectacular escape attempt. Personally, though, I'm rooting for Team Oshkosh, formerly Team Terramax. They completed the grand challenge course (one of only 4 to do so), but they took way too long to place so here's hoping they do better this year! Oh, and here's hoping they're quick on the kill switch if that monster of a truck glitches out...
I don't have to run things at perfect, highest settings. I already tried Crysis, and I didn't have any problems running it on high (and later very high after discovering how to run it at very high on XP via modding the config files.)I don't use Vista, but Direct 10 isn't necessary to run the very high, they just locked it to Directx 10. My last system lasted me 6 years because of good planning, reasonable expectations, and choosing quality parts to begin with. This time around, I found some real deals on my parts and for $1300 I ended up with a Quad core, a GTX with factory specs closer to an Ultra, quality ram with a slightly lower cas rating than those of the same price, a motherboard that focuses on what I need and not on bells 'n whistles, and of course money saved by reusing parts.
I bought an NVidia 8800 GTX at $500. I did it because it seems like the best choice for my overall design, the total machine (not including parts I scavanged off my old system) was $1300. Sure, its much more than subsidized consoles, but I'm ok with that. My current machine was custom built and assembled by myself because I like to build things (also, I'm a control freak.) I have a Wii and its fun, but it feels like I truely own my PC. Anyways, back to the design, the specifications are designed for flexable modification with little or no upgrades planned until approximatly 2012. By that time, I expect I will be back playing games at medium and low settings (Crysis is currently a breeze,) and thanks to SLI ready motherboard, by that time or maybe before, I should be able to find a $25 or cheaper 8800 GTX to pop on and hold it out longer. By that time, I expect quad core to be out, but I betting on atleast one CPU line after the Core 2 Quads to support the LGA 775 socket, which I plan to replace at a relativly cheap price around the same time. Again, it'll be an older system, upgrading to older parts, but it'll still be my system, my hobby, my enjoyment.
When I finally got mine, (just before Christmas, but it felt like finally) what I did was go into Wal-mart around 4pm to find out when their merchandise shipments came in so I could go in around that time and find out if Wii systems came in. I asked about it and the person at the desk got a phone call to pick up their division's merchandise: I got the first of 3 systems that came in that day. What's more, I got the idea from a family friend who got two systems the same way (after a couple more trips into the store, though.)
Spore is being developed with a DS version in mind for release after the PC. Of course, EA (and Will too) wants to spread Spore to all platforms (even phones) eventually.
Portal (like most of the orange box ) has a lot of subtle graphic enhancements. The new Source engine enhancements aren't too flashy, but they have it where it counts. For instance, the motion blur that occurs when quickly (most easily visible when looking at a room while falling through an infinite loop) is very subtle, but a wonderful touch of realism. More beautiful (and something not always apparent as I believe it may only appear in multicore systems) is the particle effects. Look at the mini-fireworks display that appears when your portal hits a surface it can't form on; you'll notice that the individual particles react perfectly as they should when encountering the surface and subsequent surfaces as they bounce around until they disappear. Dynamic shadows (while this one is a lot more common in games now) does appear in portal, but isn't nearly as visible as in Episode II, primarily due to the environments Portal takes place in. Finally, the best and most impressive graphical feat is the portals themselves. I'm not talking about how you can see out the other portal (as that effect's been covered) but rather the detail in which passing through the portal occurs in. Rather than be an all or nothing sort of thing like most games, you can actually see the objects pass partially through the portals. You can hold a cube or a radio halfway into a portal and would be nearly unable to tell that it is a flat surface and not a literal hole in space; these sorts of 'edge cases' are the really fantastic graphical highlights of Portal. All of these subtle touches really do put Portal in a perspective that highlights experience, rather than just visualization.
I think that's part of the problem we have in communicating games as art. We look at a picture on the wall and easily think "that's art." But we look at a game and we either think "it's a good game, but its not art" or "its very artistic, but what kind of a game is it." Art and games are not mutually exclusive in my opinion. To me, at least, art is a personal experience the artist is trying to impose on the user/viewer. That's really a very big part of gaming; immersion. I'm not talking immersion in the sense of realism or perception of the environment, but personal involvement. Even "simple games" like Pac-Man, or Puzzles have an immersive quality that draws you into them and makes you think about what they present you with; its what makes art and games. What makes good art, or a good game is usually a quality of uniqueness or differentiation that sets it apart from the rest. The Arts don't belong in stuffy museums or to the stiff dialog intellectuals, they belong in the experiences of all people; games seem like the ideal vector to achieve this.
"Although the incineration process is extremely painful, eight out of ten Aperture Science engineers believe your companion cube probably can't feel pain."
If there's been one game that evoked emotion in me this year, it was Portal. From dread and fear when discovering the ratman's nest, to shock when I saw the fire pit open up, and consistent joy in solving the puzzles or hearing GLaDOS speaking. Portal's minimalist beauty, awesome execution, and wonderful writing puts it at the top of my "games are art" arguments list.
Slashdot Mirror
Just encase it appears to be offtopic to some, I believe it is referencing this strip, erm, no pun intended.
If ruggedness is your concern, at a price such as this, then consider this tank of a laptop.
Full magnesium alloy case, shock-mounted hard drive, Windows XP, handwriting functions, vibration and drop-shock resistant, moisture/dust resistant LCD, keyboard and, touchpad protected by a replaceable screen film.
Nature intended nothing. If we survive by foregoing adaption, so be it. The means are judged only according to their ends.
Sounds fun! But what would pictures of musty old scrolls we've already probably gotten past the need of do? If it were me, I'd instead try to stop the fire and/or spread the knowledge so we have an altered history of not having to relearn all that stuff and possibly end up even more advanced that we currently are because we spent time on newer things.
Two words: Summer Jobs. Kids who can't afford to upgrade very often are going to make huge leaps, but only when they have the money to do so. Many of them probably saw the awesome lineup coming for the fall and set about saving up during their summer job to update their systems.
As much as I would like to see it happen, there actually are technical challenges to just straight getting Direct3D 10 on XP. While we certainly now know that it is possible to see the same pretty graphics, Direct3D 10 itself is not a possibility on XP without major overhauls. Shiny DirectX 10 Graphics you get from Direct3D 10 are, but not Direct3D 10 itself, since Microsoft has zero incentive to do the kind of work necessary to get it to work on XP, no matter how small Vista usage is. This Beyond3D article explains why.
Google my pseudonym and anything written by me is obscured in a sea of fanfics, fanpics, and completly unrelated person's posting information. Type my real name into google and you'll find 3 entries relating to me: two of which are useful but could have been found before the Internet. Nothing has changed; only the speed of things have changed. If someone really wishes to find me, they would, but the majority of the information would come from offline. Preserving anonmity is still a keystone of the freedom of privacy; whether you choose to maintain it or not is you own business.
Wow, two different articles from the same department, that's like a record considering most of the time we get the same article from two different departments! Seriously* I've heard of companies that seem constantly undergoing a reorg, but Slashdot's restructuring is just ridiculous!
*I'm as serious as there is a lack of sarcasm in this sentence.
Funny, I also though Balrog, but I though Balrog
Moral Statute Machine: PHAEDRU5's grandmother, you are fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.
Moral Statute Machine: Your repeated violation of the Verbal Morality Statute, code 777, has caused me to notify the San Angeles^W^W Westminster Police Department. Please remain where you are for your reprimand.
And those who can't count.
I totally agree, thankfully the same time the Orange Box came out, I was introduced to perhaps the only honest reviewer/editorial I've ever seen. Plus he's hilarious to boot! There's no need for a score, or a summary, its an editorial review that gets it point across, makes positive and negative game commentary and social commentary and manages to deliver it in a delightfully hilarious fashion.
His Halo 3 review was honest, critical, and has a poignant comment or two on the very subject of broken game reviews.
But he was only a bit more kind to the Orange Box, while still full of commentary (except on portal) it all had a pretty positive overall feel, much more so that Halo 3.
Speaking to social commentary... well, I'll just link the Medal Of Honor:Airborn review and leave it at that!
This Prius had a more spectacular escape attempt. Personally, though, I'm rooting for Team Oshkosh, formerly Team Terramax. They completed the grand challenge course (one of only 4 to do so), but they took way too long to place so here's hoping they do better this year! Oh, and here's hoping they're quick on the kill switch if that monster of a truck glitches out...
I don't have to run things at perfect, highest settings. I already tried Crysis, and I didn't have any problems running it on high (and later very high after discovering how to run it at very high on XP via modding the config files.)I don't use Vista, but Direct 10 isn't necessary to run the very high, they just locked it to Directx 10. My last system lasted me 6 years because of good planning, reasonable expectations, and choosing quality parts to begin with. This time around, I found some real deals on my parts and for $1300 I ended up with a Quad core, a GTX with factory specs closer to an Ultra, quality ram with a slightly lower cas rating than those of the same price, a motherboard that focuses on what I need and not on bells 'n whistles, and of course money saved by reusing parts.
I bought an NVidia 8800 GTX at $500. I did it because it seems like the best choice for my overall design, the total machine (not including parts I scavanged off my old system) was $1300. Sure, its much more than subsidized consoles, but I'm ok with that. My current machine was custom built and assembled by myself because I like to build things (also, I'm a control freak.) I have a Wii and its fun, but it feels like I truely own my PC. Anyways, back to the design, the specifications are designed for flexable modification with little or no upgrades planned until approximatly 2012. By that time, I expect I will be back playing games at medium and low settings (Crysis is currently a breeze,) and thanks to SLI ready motherboard, by that time or maybe before, I should be able to find a $25 or cheaper 8800 GTX to pop on and hold it out longer. By that time, I expect quad core to be out, but I betting on atleast one CPU line after the Core 2 Quads to support the LGA 775 socket, which I plan to replace at a relativly cheap price around the same time. Again, it'll be an older system, upgrading to older parts, but it'll still be my system, my hobby, my enjoyment.
Maybe not, but it certainly isn't cheap to.
When I finally got mine, (just before Christmas, but it felt like finally) what I did was go into Wal-mart around 4pm to find out when their merchandise shipments came in so I could go in around that time and find out if Wii systems came in. I asked about it and the person at the desk got a phone call to pick up their division's merchandise: I got the first of 3 systems that came in that day. What's more, I got the idea from a family friend who got two systems the same way (after a couple more trips into the store, though.)
Spore is being developed with a DS version in mind for release after the PC. Of course, EA (and Will too) wants to spread Spore to all platforms (even phones) eventually.
A link to the real article from The Guardian would have been much nicer.
Portal (like most of the orange box ) has a lot of subtle graphic enhancements. The new Source engine enhancements aren't too flashy, but they have it where it counts. For instance, the motion blur that occurs when quickly (most easily visible when looking at a room while falling through an infinite loop) is very subtle, but a wonderful touch of realism. More beautiful (and something not always apparent as I believe it may only appear in multicore systems) is the particle effects. Look at the mini-fireworks display that appears when your portal hits a surface it can't form on; you'll notice that the individual particles react perfectly as they should when encountering the surface and subsequent surfaces as they bounce around until they disappear. Dynamic shadows (while this one is a lot more common in games now) does appear in portal, but isn't nearly as visible as in Episode II, primarily due to the environments Portal takes place in. Finally, the best and most impressive graphical feat is the portals themselves. I'm not talking about how you can see out the other portal (as that effect's been covered) but rather the detail in which passing through the portal occurs in. Rather than be an all or nothing sort of thing like most games, you can actually see the objects pass partially through the portals. You can hold a cube or a radio halfway into a portal and would be nearly unable to tell that it is a flat surface and not a literal hole in space; these sorts of 'edge cases' are the really fantastic graphical highlights of Portal. All of these subtle touches really do put Portal in a perspective that highlights experience, rather than just visualization.
I think that's part of the problem we have in communicating games as art. We look at a picture on the wall and easily think "that's art." But we look at a game and we either think "it's a good game, but its not art" or "its very artistic, but what kind of a game is it." Art and games are not mutually exclusive in my opinion. To me, at least, art is a personal experience the artist is trying to impose on the user/viewer. That's really a very big part of gaming; immersion. I'm not talking immersion in the sense of realism or perception of the environment, but personal involvement. Even "simple games" like Pac-Man, or Puzzles have an immersive quality that draws you into them and makes you think about what they present you with; its what makes art and games. What makes good art, or a good game is usually a quality of uniqueness or differentiation that sets it apart from the rest. The Arts don't belong in stuffy museums or to the stiff dialog intellectuals, they belong in the experiences of all people; games seem like the ideal vector to achieve this.
"Although the incineration process is extremely painful, eight out of ten Aperture Science engineers believe your companion cube probably can't feel pain."
If there's been one game that evoked emotion in me this year, it was Portal. From dread and fear when discovering the ratman's nest, to shock when I saw the fire pit open up, and consistent joy in solving the puzzles or hearing GLaDOS speaking. Portal's minimalist beauty, awesome execution, and wonderful writing puts it at the top of my "games are art" arguments list.