Whenever I read about these 4x games, I always remember all the time I spent on Pax Imperia. Not that Eminent Domain thing, but the original one for the Mac. Man I loved that game. I would tweak my race's abilities, ship designs, and tech designs as much as I could, often just for fun. I would sit there for days. I haven't seen another space game that was as customisable as that one. It ruined the rest of the genre for me.
Or they could initiate an attack from out of the country, or from AOL or Earthlink accounts under assumed names, or net cafes, or college campuses, or the library. The only way to prevent this would be to disallow access to the Internet to anyone without special clearance. Either the people that came up with this idea are really stupid, or they have an ulterior motive.
If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, even the book says that Legolas picked up orc and goblin arrows along the way. Besides, if you sat through the movie counting the arrows, I think it's possible that you might have missed the point.
I'm not much of a pedant myself when it comes to movies, but I noticed how Legolas had a seemingly infinite supply of arrows, even in the middle of a battle when he couldn't replenish them. Personally, I just thought it was pretty funny. Kind of the fantasy equivalent of the action hero that never stops to reload his pistol.
Didn't the two companies work together on Chrono Trigger? Perhaps we'll see more RPGs along those lines now.
Personally, I just hope the people from the Enix side explain to the people from the Square side that role playing games should actually include some interactive elements rather than being a ten hour cut scene. I miss the days of old school RPGs where you actually had a chance to play.
Well, this is often given as the reason that we -should- develop nanotech. It's still going to be developed sooner or later, and I want our people to be able counter it. There's no defense against nanotech at this time, since the only real defense would be -other- nanotech.
The idea that banning it will make it go away is ludicrous. Sooner or later, some country will come up with potentially dangerous nanomachines. We can't prevent it. It reminds me of biological warfare agents. We restricted it, while the Russians continued working on it full-force. They were decades ahead of us. One virus given as an example tricks your body into attacking your nerve cells, basically causing a fatal case of multiple sclerosis. By the time any symptoms manifest, the virus itself is already gone, so there is no way to track it. Really nasty. I don't want some unfriendly group coming up with the nanotech version of that before we discover ways to counteract it.
Basically, the thought of a world where we can do such things is frightening, but the thought of a world where everyone other than us can is worse.
I don't know if I agree. Gasmasks can be a stylish accessory to any ensemble. I'm sure we've seen those cyberpunk movies and such where gasmasks are de rigueur. They look pretty cool, don't they?
I mean, yeah, it's good to have an atmosphere that will support life and all, but keen fashion sense is pretty important too.
I don't know if I agree with you about the villains. I was having a conversation about this at the local comic store. Most of the villains in the DC universe are custom-tailored to be the arch-nemeses of the heroes that they fight. Usually pretty one-dimensional, and often totally useless against anyone but the one particular good guy that happens to go up against them all the time.
There are a couple of exceptions, though. Lex Luthor is a pretty damn good villain in any book, and the Joker is my favorite bad guy ever. He's a shining example of how pure unbound psychosis can overcome superhuman abilities. Serves as a shining example to the common man trying to get somewhere in life.
You can always just use a fake SSN in those cases. It's generally recommended to use numbers that can't be mistaken for a real one, such as 078-05-1120, which was used in advertisements in the 1940s and 50s. There are situations when this is illegal, though, such as when applying for a driver's license.
Wow. This is -wonderful- flamebait on so many levels. I wonder if DrBiscuit is even really a woman. I'm guessing not.
Different Webbing Question
on
Comic Book Physics
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· Score: 2, Interesting
What I always wondered is where all that webbing comes from in the first place. I mean, that web cartridge can only fit so much material inside. They do run out eventually, but it always seemed to me like he could get way too much out of each one. In the movie, he can just shoot webbing out of his hands. Where do the proteins come from? I'd think that after swinging through the city for a while, he'd starve to death.
I think the real answer to this, as with many things in life, lies in Star Trek. They have a pretty good blend of visual and speech interfaces for computers. When giving the computer a command or trying to explain something to it, the easiest method is speech. When they need to get the real work done, though, they always go back to the visual LCARS interface. That seems like it will be the most likely outcome.
I -still- haven't figured out exactly what to get my girlfriend for Valentine's Day. I'm really glad we don't get competitive with this sort of thing, because she orderd me the Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust DVD, right after getting me a copy of Grand Theft Auto 3. That's pretty damn hard to match.
Fortunately, she's pretty easy to please, so my plans mostly include nice flowers, a cute stuffed animal of some sort (she loves that kind of thing) and dinner at the little sushi place we used to go to when we started dating. I'll also probably burn a mix cd of anime music for her, because she's been saying that she'd like something like that.
Mostly, this holiday reminds me that I need a job again, because last year I got her a fscking huge bouquet of roses, a ruby pendant, and a few other things. It's frustrating to not be able to follow up on that. Oh well, perhaps the economy might recover again by next year.
I'm wondering why this post was modded up so high. It -is- quite long, I'll give you that, and rather entertaining from a Lone Gunmen point of view. Looking at the actual content, though, it's mostly made up of assertions, accusations, and insults to the intelligence of those who disagree with him. My bullshit detector immediately went off in two areas, though: talking about information "they" don't want you to know, and backing up his claim with the ever-popular pseudoscience phrase "trust me on this."
As to the actual science, I'm not nearly as sure of myself as he is, but I believe all experiments in ZPE have just returned very small amounts of energy in controlled lab experiments. As for cold fusion, there are some reputable scientific claims that it does actually create energy as well, but they are hard to reproduce (and therefore prove), not to mention that whatever phenomenon that causes what they do see is as of yet unexplained and could likely not even be fusion at all.
Personally, I must admit that I am interested in both subjects too. The former because ZPE does seem to have some promising uses in the (likely far) future, and the latter because the experiments in cold fusion have turned up some curious evidence, such as elevated levels of helium in a closed canister, and I'd kind of like to know what is really going on there, even if it is not some sort of miracle super reactor.
Hey, I'm only 21 and when I saw the headline I thought they were talking about some sort of homemade PDP-11. I was pretty surprised that they'd use this term to describe a smaller microcomputer. I'm guessing it's an oversight, though, because I can't imagine anyone here not knowing what a minicomputer is.
Re:Ireland *is* part of the Euro-Zone !
on
The Euro
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· Score: 1
Luxemburg is its own country? I always thought it was part of Belgium. Shows how much I know about European geography. How embarraskin'.
I remember reading this article in Wired the day after I went to Linus' talk for the Computer Museum History Center about the origins of Linux.
Someone asked a question about whether he really thought that Linux would end up on the desktop. He explained that he always thought of Linux as a desktop OS primarily, and a server OS second. He said that it might take years, but eventually Linux would emerge as a large presence on the desktop.
I think his argument was that the stability and availability of the software, in addition to increasing support and customisability, makes it more likely to get into the home as the technology continues to mature.
The way he talked about it all, I found his opinion very convincing, and when I read this article the next day by some random journalist, I actually felt somewhat amused by all the doomsaying contained within when contrasted to the thoughts of the man behind it all.
I wouldn't spend that much on it, but I can conceivably see how a fan of the sport with a lot of cash would shell out the money to own a heavyweight champion. It's a definite collector's item.
Comedy Central didn't make the show. It picked up an existing tournament created by former competitors in the Robot Wars circuit, which itself was created by a special effects guy.
Also, these "robots" are really just combination RC-Car/gladiators that would be of little to no use to the military. You can't even use projectile weapons on them.
They may end up doing something with the Final Fantasy movie like was done with the new Vampire Hunter D movie out in Japan. That anime was actually dubbed first in English in the studio, and is playing that way in theaters in Japan, subtitled in Japanese. They are making a Japanese version, which they will be releasing on video there.
In this case, as the characters are tailored to the voice actors, I can see the same things happening. I would imagine the Japanese would have the same feeling we have here about dubbing over foreign language movies.
This just underlines the reason I get so annoyed at Joy. He seems to be unnecessarily against the nerds of the world: computer geeks, scientists, etc.
All his talks are about how these people are completely irresponsible and are going to kill us all with their actions. When I was at that Stanford talk a while ago, he spoke at length about how we should regulate biotech/nanotech/robotics/etc, and seemed to dismiss or just not hear many reasonable points by the other speakers. His statement here that building products that destroy our economy was a "nerd view" sounded like he was using "nerd" as an insult. I can see that from mainstream media and such, but he's in the industry.
On another note, I hear he got a few laughs at the talk in SF a couple of days ago. Unintentionally, of course. I don't think he gets it. Oh well, I'll just continue to use him as a contrast to sensible futurists.
TeamSite actually runs on both NT and Solaris. I work at Interwoven, and I've been thinking a Linux port of the TeamSite server would be pretty neat. I haven't actually asked any of the engineers about it, though. I do know of a few companies that use linux for the client.
I am really getting rather tired of being told nothing's wrong with me by people who have never dealt with bipolar disorder. I mean, I'm not bothered by the ones that say that I'm just weak or lazy because I couldn't complete school, or because I have so much trouble getting out of the house etc. I've been hearing that for years and have concluded that the main problem is that those people are idiots.
It really does get to me, though, when I keep hearing people trying to "defend" the "creative and unique" people from psychiatrists that try to say they have problems. I mean, mania and depression isn't just being happy then sad then happy again. I mean, one week I could be stuck in bed at least sixteen hours a day and on the verge of emotional collapse at any unforeseen circumstance, and the next week I may stay up for days on end full of energy yet unable to concentrate on one thing for more than five minutes on end.
I really don't think most people are qualified to talk about mental or emotional illness unless they have it themselves, or at least have a degree. Even then, different people have different experiences with bipolarity, and different levels of severity.
This argument about mp3 distribution is full of accusations being thrown around on both sides of moral corruption and evil and greed and possibly sloth and whatever other deadly sins you want to stick in there. The RIAA says that mp3s are going to destroy the music industry and cause the Apocalypse. Musicians hate the RIAA but hate those these programs that give people free copies of their songs even more. Many of todays youth talk about the vile decaying Nazi Big Record Labels and their attempts to control what everyone hears when music should obviously be free etc.
From a practical standpoint here, the argument is moot. Especially now with Gnutella and derivatives beginning to take hold in the minds of geeks, there's really no way to get rid of mp3 trading. Musicians can whine until they're blue in the face, and the Record Industry can try to sue all 250 million people in the United States, but the idea is not going to go away. Despite what zealous freedom maniacs say, mp3 distribution can be construed as stealing from the artists, and indeed most artists are construing it as such. So what. I still have around 3 gigs of mp3s, most of which I don't have legitimate claim to. I'm not about to go spend $500 on cds in order to get copies of songs that I get stuck in my head when I can find the specific ones I want for free. And though people talk of the nuisance that finding mp3s is, it takes less time for me to get what I want online that it does to go over to the music store. And when it doesn't I can just let the download go on while I play nethack or something.
The point I've been getting to in this rambling little comment is that this isn't a matter of who is right and who is wrong, it's a matter of a new technology available that everyone is pretty much damn well going to have to get used to. Once they do, I doubt it will take very long for our lovely capitalists to figure out how to make a huge profit in a new way in response.
Disclaimer: I am writing this while ill and under the influence of prescription sleeping pills that don't seem to have quite put me to sleep yet, so I am not responsible if you actually take anything I say seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
Whenever I read about these 4x games, I always remember all the time I spent on Pax Imperia. Not that Eminent Domain thing, but the original one for the Mac. Man I loved that game. I would tweak my race's abilities, ship designs, and tech designs as much as I could, often just for fun. I would sit there for days. I haven't seen another space game that was as customisable as that one. It ruined the rest of the genre for me.
Or they could initiate an attack from out of the country, or from AOL or Earthlink accounts under assumed names, or net cafes, or college campuses, or the library. The only way to prevent this would be to disallow access to the Internet to anyone without special clearance. Either the people that came up with this idea are really stupid, or they have an ulterior motive.
Didn't the two companies work together on Chrono Trigger? Perhaps we'll see more RPGs along those lines now.
Personally, I just hope the people from the Enix side explain to the people from the Square side that role playing games should actually include some interactive elements rather than being a ten hour cut scene. I miss the days of old school RPGs where you actually had a chance to play.
Brendan
Well, this is often given as the reason that we -should- develop nanotech. It's still going to be developed sooner or later, and I want our people to be able counter it. There's no defense against nanotech at this time, since the only real defense would be -other- nanotech.
The idea that banning it will make it go away is ludicrous. Sooner or later, some country will come up with potentially dangerous nanomachines. We can't prevent it. It reminds me of biological warfare agents. We restricted it, while the Russians continued working on it full-force. They were decades ahead of us. One virus given as an example tricks your body into attacking your nerve cells, basically causing a fatal case of multiple sclerosis. By the time any symptoms manifest, the virus itself is already gone, so there is no way to track it. Really nasty. I don't want some unfriendly group coming up with the nanotech version of that before we discover ways to counteract it.
Basically, the thought of a world where we can do such things is frightening, but the thought of a world where everyone other than us can is worse.
Brendan
I don't know if I agree. Gasmasks can be a stylish accessory to any ensemble. I'm sure we've seen those cyberpunk movies and such where gasmasks are de rigueur. They look pretty cool, don't they?
I mean, yeah, it's good to have an atmosphere that will support life and all, but keen fashion sense is pretty important too.
I don't know if I agree with you about the villains. I was having a conversation about this at the local comic store. Most of the villains in the DC universe are custom-tailored to be the arch-nemeses of the heroes that they fight. Usually pretty one-dimensional, and often totally useless against anyone but the one particular good guy that happens to go up against them all the time.
There are a couple of exceptions, though. Lex Luthor is a pretty damn good villain in any book, and the Joker is my favorite bad guy ever. He's a shining example of how pure unbound psychosis can overcome superhuman abilities. Serves as a shining example to the common man trying to get somewhere in life.
I would love to see this, but only if they would let Seanbaby write the screenplay.
You can always just use a fake SSN in those cases. It's generally recommended to use numbers that can't be mistaken for a real one, such as 078-05-1120, which was used in advertisements in the 1940s and 50s. There are situations when this is illegal, though, such as when applying for a driver's license.
Wow. This is -wonderful- flamebait on so many levels. I wonder if DrBiscuit is even really a woman. I'm guessing not.
What I always wondered is where all that webbing comes from in the first place. I mean, that web cartridge can only fit so much material inside. They do run out eventually, but it always seemed to me like he could get way too much out of each one. In the movie, he can just shoot webbing out of his hands. Where do the proteins come from? I'd think that after swinging through the city for a while, he'd starve to death.
I think the real answer to this, as with many things in life, lies in Star Trek. They have a pretty good blend of visual and speech interfaces for computers. When giving the computer a command or trying to explain something to it, the easiest method is speech. When they need to get the real work done, though, they always go back to the visual LCARS interface. That seems like it will be the most likely outcome.
What school was this?
It's really not a good sign when you have to explain the concepts of ASM to the class lecturers.
I -still- haven't figured out exactly what to get my girlfriend for Valentine's Day. I'm really glad we don't get competitive with this sort of thing, because she orderd me the Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust DVD, right after getting me a copy of Grand Theft Auto 3. That's pretty damn hard to match.
Fortunately, she's pretty easy to please, so my plans mostly include nice flowers, a cute stuffed animal of some sort (she loves that kind of thing) and dinner at the little sushi place we used to go to when we started dating. I'll also probably burn a mix cd of anime music for her, because she's been saying that she'd like something like that.
Mostly, this holiday reminds me that I need a job again, because last year I got her a fscking huge bouquet of roses, a ruby pendant, and a few other things. It's frustrating to not be able to follow up on that. Oh well, perhaps the economy might recover again by next year.
I'm wondering why this post was modded up so high. It -is- quite long, I'll give you that, and rather entertaining from a Lone Gunmen point of view. Looking at the actual content, though, it's mostly made up of assertions, accusations, and insults to the intelligence of those who disagree with him. My bullshit detector immediately went off in two areas, though: talking about information "they" don't want you to know, and backing up his claim with the ever-popular pseudoscience phrase "trust me on this."
As to the actual science, I'm not nearly as sure of myself as he is, but I believe all experiments in ZPE have just returned very small amounts of energy in controlled lab experiments. As for cold fusion, there are some reputable scientific claims that it does actually create energy as well, but they are hard to reproduce (and therefore prove), not to mention that whatever phenomenon that causes what they do see is as of yet unexplained and could likely not even be fusion at all.
Personally, I must admit that I am interested in both subjects too. The former because ZPE does seem to have some promising uses in the (likely far) future, and the latter because the experiments in cold fusion have turned up some curious evidence, such as elevated levels of helium in a closed canister, and I'd kind of like to know what is really going on there, even if it is not some sort of miracle super reactor.
Hey, I'm only 21 and when I saw the headline I thought they were talking about some sort of homemade PDP-11. I was pretty surprised that they'd use this term to describe a smaller microcomputer. I'm guessing it's an oversight, though, because I can't imagine anyone here not knowing what a minicomputer is.
Luxemburg is its own country? I always thought it was part of Belgium. Shows how much I know about European geography. How embarraskin'.
brendan
I remember reading this article in Wired the day after I went to Linus' talk for the Computer Museum History Center about the origins of Linux.
Someone asked a question about whether he really thought that Linux would end up on the desktop. He explained that he always thought of Linux as a desktop OS primarily, and a server OS second. He said that it might take years, but eventually Linux would emerge as a large presence on the desktop.
I think his argument was that the stability and availability of the software, in addition to increasing support and customisability, makes it more likely to get into the home as the technology continues to mature.
The way he talked about it all, I found his opinion very convincing, and when I read this article the next day by some random journalist, I actually felt somewhat amused by all the doomsaying contained within when contrasted to the thoughts of the man behind it all.
I wouldn't spend that much on it, but I can conceivably see how a fan of the sport with a lot of cash would shell out the money to own a heavyweight champion. It's a definite collector's item.
Comedy Central didn't make the show. It picked up an existing tournament created by former competitors in the Robot Wars circuit, which itself was created by a special effects guy.
Also, these "robots" are really just combination RC-Car/gladiators that would be of little to no use to the military. You can't even use projectile weapons on them.
They may end up doing something with the Final Fantasy movie like was done with the new Vampire Hunter D movie out in Japan. That anime was actually dubbed first in English in the studio, and is playing that way in theaters in Japan, subtitled in Japanese. They are making a Japanese version, which they will be releasing on video there.
In this case, as the characters are tailored to the voice actors, I can see the same things happening. I would imagine the Japanese would have the same feeling we have here about dubbing over foreign language movies.
This just underlines the reason I get so annoyed at Joy. He seems to be unnecessarily against the nerds of the world: computer geeks, scientists, etc.
All his talks are about how these people are completely irresponsible and are going to kill us all with their actions. When I was at that Stanford talk a while ago, he spoke at length about how we should regulate biotech/nanotech/robotics/etc, and seemed to dismiss or just not hear many reasonable points by the other speakers. His statement here that building products that destroy our economy was a "nerd view" sounded like he was using "nerd" as an insult. I can see that from mainstream media and such, but he's in the industry.
On another note, I hear he got a few laughs at the talk in SF a couple of days ago. Unintentionally, of course. I don't think he gets it. Oh well, I'll just continue to use him as a contrast to sensible futurists.
TeamSite actually runs on both NT and Solaris. I work at Interwoven, and I've been thinking a Linux port of the TeamSite server would be pretty neat. I haven't actually asked any of the engineers about it, though. I do know of a few companies that use linux for the client.
I am really getting rather tired of being told nothing's wrong with me by people who have never dealt with bipolar disorder. I mean, I'm not bothered by the ones that say that I'm just weak or lazy because I couldn't complete school, or because I have so much trouble getting out of the house etc. I've been hearing that for years and have concluded that the main problem is that those people are idiots.
It really does get to me, though, when I keep hearing people trying to "defend" the "creative and unique" people from psychiatrists that try to say they have problems. I mean, mania and depression isn't just being happy then sad then happy again. I mean, one week I could be stuck in bed at least sixteen hours a day and on the verge of emotional collapse at any unforeseen circumstance, and the next week I may stay up for days on end full of energy yet unable to concentrate on one thing for more than five minutes on end.
I really don't think most people are qualified to talk about mental or emotional illness unless they have it themselves, or at least have a degree. Even then, different people have different experiences with bipolarity, and different levels of severity.
This argument about mp3 distribution is full of accusations being thrown around on both sides of moral corruption and evil and greed and possibly sloth and whatever other deadly sins you want to stick in there. The RIAA says that mp3s are going to destroy the music industry and cause the Apocalypse. Musicians hate the RIAA but hate those these programs that give people free copies of their songs even more. Many of todays youth talk about the vile decaying Nazi Big Record Labels and their attempts to control what everyone hears when music should obviously be free etc.
From a practical standpoint here, the argument is moot. Especially now with Gnutella and derivatives beginning to take hold in the minds of geeks, there's really no way to get rid of mp3 trading. Musicians can whine until they're blue in the face, and the Record Industry can try to sue all 250 million people in the United States, but the idea is not going to go away. Despite what zealous freedom maniacs say, mp3 distribution can be construed as stealing from the artists, and indeed most artists are construing it as such. So what. I still have around 3 gigs of mp3s, most of which I don't have legitimate claim to. I'm not about to go spend $500 on cds in order to get copies of songs that I get stuck in my head when I can find the specific ones I want for free. And though people talk of the nuisance that finding mp3s is, it takes less time for me to get what I want online that it does to go over to the music store. And when it doesn't I can just let the download go on while I play nethack or something.
The point I've been getting to in this rambling little comment is that this isn't a matter of who is right and who is wrong, it's a matter of a new technology available that everyone is pretty much damn well going to have to get used to. Once they do, I doubt it will take very long for our lovely capitalists to figure out how to make a huge profit in a new way in response.
Disclaimer: I am writing this while ill and under the influence of prescription sleeping pills that don't seem to have quite put me to sleep yet, so I am not responsible if you actually take anything I say seriously.