Much as how the ideal goal for all companies engaged in free market competition is not to be, the ideal goal for all career politicians engaged in democratic government is not to be.
The closer games get to simulating reality, the less reasons & excuses there are to do bad things in reality. With full immersive VR, the collective id of humanity can be contained in the sandbox "Matrix" where it belongs. Reality may finally become the exclusive domain of our higher nature, unpolluted by our base, obsolete animal/tribal urges.
People are so quick to fear the "corrupting" effects of virtual reality, but it may very well be that VR is the key to establishing an unimaginably better reality.
Totalitarianism usually worms its way into power by appealing to "strong father" imagery, but it's equally adept at exploiting "protective mother" emotions as well.
Frankly, I think nursing homes are awful due to the depressing sense of alienation they tend to create, but if they're inevitable then they should be placed next to kindergarten schools and daycare centers. That way, the elderly can easily spend time with the children, and the children can learn to appreciate & respect the elderly.
If rulers take too much grain, people rapidly starve. If rulers take too much freedom, people easily rebel. If rulers take too much happiness, people gladly die. By not interfering the sage improves the people's lives.
Marshall Brain wrote about this in his online novel Manna. The later chapters concerning the "Australia Project" bear a striking resemblance to the never-implemented 1930s-era theory of Technocracy (The actual main Technocracy site is rather ill-organized).
Using your analogy though, in this case we're feeding a huge business that doesn't like sodomy. They invest millions and millions to make people think sodomy is bad, make newer overly broad antisodomy laws that keep us from legally using q-tips, etc.
Sounds like the church, which is a much, MUCH more influential and powerful organization than the RIAA. And yet look how that turned out.
I have never understanded why almost every 3D fighting game (VF, Tekken, SC) relies on the player learning an endless amount of movements, and each one has a different way of blocking/countering, while 2D prefer simpler set of movements, combining them in diferent ways to get complexity.
Technical limitations.
It is much, MUCH easier to animate the fighters in 3D games. Each fighting technique merely requires a bit of extra skeletal animation, so 3D fighting games can afford to have hundreds of different fighting animations per character. Whereas in 2D games, each new technique requires drawing a whole new sequence of unique bitmap images, so there is more of an emphasis of chaining together what is already there.
The humanoid robot w/regards to the East & Wes
on
Martial Arts Robots
·
· Score: 1
The Western mindset has its roots in a philosophical system that states that man is "made in God's image". To that perspective, the creation of humanoid robots will seem eerily heretical, and perhaps threatening to man's "place" in the universe. Hence Western sci-fi will tend to strictly delineate & emphasize the differences between robots and humans. Think "The Terminator", "The Matrix", Asimov's strict laws of robotics, etc etc.
The Eastern mindset has its roots in a philosophical system that states that every creature and object has a soul, and that those souls reincarnate between different forms. To that perspective, humanoid robots are a new companion life form, or perhaps even the natural evolution of humanity. Hence Eastern sci-fi will tend to blur the differences between robots and humans. Think "Astroboy", "Ghost in the Shell", the Iron Man Tetsuo films, etc etc.
Moralistic media watchdogs would have you believe that humans are "weak" against media, and that censorship is needed for "protection". That viewpoint is utterly insulting crap.
The media (art, literature, movies, games, etc) is not our master. We are not mindless robots who can only follow orders. We are superior to all media. We are living human beings with free will and adaptable minds.
Blaming the media is the path of power-hungry tyrants who wish to make men into mindless robot servants. That can only happen if one willingly submits to their nonsense and lies. Never surrender your mental freedom.
IMHO, the culture of the Japanese anime/manga industry has developed into something very "hacker-like".
Perhaps the greatest example of this is the Japanese doujinshi (fan-works) sub-culture. In Japan, amatuer production of titles based on commercial works is actively encouraged, even though such works are technically violations of intellectual property laws. A fan is permitted to use existing ideas, characters, and settings for his own stories, and even sell them for a profit to other fans. Side-stories, parodies, alternate scenarios, and even pornographic rewrites are all generally permitted; it is _extremely_ rare, if not almost impossible, for a commercial company to bar doujinshi of its works.
This has the beneficial effects of sustaining a steady fan-base for existing works, as well as creating potential skilled recruits for the professional industry. Indeed, many professional anime/manga creators start off in the doujinshi scene before "graduating" into creating original works, just like how many professional computer game designers start out writing FPS mods and small shareware programs.
Naturally, an industry that has grown to benefit from a "hacker-like" mentality would produce works that encourage and appeal to hackers. Thus the popularity of anime & manga among geeks.
Frankly, I LIKE the slower, meandering pace. I dislike comics that stuff each panel to the gills with exposition and word ballons, that insist on rushing the reader from one scene to another before they can properly enjoy it. Fred is basing his work on the Japanese manga style, and manga is generally slower paced and more visual than American comics anyway.
Really, what's to stop Linux from using Microsoft's own philosophy against it? Absorb DirectX into Linux, then make it perform even better under Linux than it ever did under Windows. That's sure to get the attention of at least the game developers and hardcore gamers.
"Fight fire with fire," as they say. I frankly don't have much interest in establishing Linux as a gaming and desktop OS, but I'm surprised at how the people that do care often end up handicapping their efforts under some deluded notion of maintaining OS "purity". Look, there is no such thing as "purity" when it comes to Linux, because its open source nature means that it is always changing. This "impurity" is in fact one of Linux's greatest strengths; it gives it an unparalled capacity to easily absorb new ideas and methods into itself. This advantage should be utilized to the fullest.
Consider this:
- The recipient has to pay for all the email he recieves, irregardles of whether he wanted it or not.
- The webmaster has to pay for all the page views he gets, irregardless of whether he wanted them or not.
Shouldn't it work the opposite way? Can't we come up with a new system/protocol that does so?
Or... swap the two existing systems? HTML emails are already a minor curse; perhaps we can somehow wrest a beneficial effect from it? And it shouldn't be too hard to develop an app that can use webspace as a means to communicate simple text messages to intended recipients only.
Okay, I'm rambling a bit, and I don't profess to be an expert on these subjects, and perhaps people are already too entrenched in how things are currently done, but geez, there's gotta be a better way to do all of this than the headache we have right now.
Slashdot Mirror
Much as how the ideal goal for all companies engaged in free market competition is not to be, the ideal goal for all career politicians engaged in democratic government is not to be.
The closer games get to simulating reality, the less reasons & excuses there are to do bad things in reality. With full immersive VR, the collective id of humanity can be contained in the sandbox "Matrix" where it belongs. Reality may finally become the exclusive domain of our higher nature, unpolluted by our base, obsolete animal/tribal urges.
People are so quick to fear the "corrupting" effects of virtual reality, but it may very well be that VR is the key to establishing an unimaginably better reality.
Totalitarianism usually worms its way into power by appealing to "strong father" imagery, but it's equally adept at exploiting "protective mother" emotions as well.
The soap mouse is nothing like a Wiimote or gyroscope mouse. There's a YouTube video of how to build and and use one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hohu8SSpduM
Decades ago, we got electricity to remote rural areas. There's no reason we can't do the same now for broadband.
Frankly, I think nursing homes are awful due to the depressing sense of alienation they tend to create, but if they're inevitable then they should be placed next to kindergarten schools and daycare centers. That way, the elderly can easily spend time with the children, and the children can learn to appreciate & respect the elderly.
...and it's smaller to boot:
Hybrid Assistive Leg
There Is No Lumber Cartel. :P
If rulers take too much grain,
people rapidly starve.
If rulers take too much freedom,
people easily rebel.
If rulers take too much happiness,
people gladly die.
By not interfering the sage improves the people's lives.
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Marshall Brain wrote about this in his online novel Manna. The later chapters concerning the "Australia Project" bear a striking resemblance to the never-implemented 1930s-era theory of Technocracy (The actual main Technocracy site is rather ill-organized).
Using your analogy though, in this case we're feeding a huge business that doesn't like sodomy. They invest millions and millions to make people think sodomy is bad, make newer overly broad antisodomy laws that keep us from legally using q-tips, etc.
Sounds like the church, which is a much, MUCH more influential and powerful organization than the RIAA. And yet look how that turned out.
Mmm. probably. That means that mocap is cheaper than hand drawing.
I said "easier", not "cheaper". Motion capture has higher initial costs, but it is far less work-intensive than hand-drawn animation.
I have never understanded why almost every 3D fighting game (VF, Tekken, SC) relies on the player learning an endless amount of movements, and each one has a different way of blocking/countering, while 2D prefer simpler set of movements, combining them in diferent ways to get complexity.
Technical limitations.
It is much, MUCH easier to animate the fighters in 3D games. Each fighting technique merely requires a bit of extra skeletal animation, so 3D fighting games can afford to have hundreds of different fighting animations per character. Whereas in 2D games, each new technique requires drawing a whole new sequence of unique bitmap images, so there is more of an emphasis of chaining together what is already there.
The Western mindset has its roots in a philosophical system that states that man is "made in God's image". To that perspective, the creation of humanoid robots will seem eerily heretical, and perhaps threatening to man's "place" in the universe. Hence Western sci-fi will tend to strictly delineate & emphasize the differences between robots and humans. Think "The Terminator", "The Matrix", Asimov's strict laws of robotics, etc etc.
The Eastern mindset has its roots in a philosophical system that states that every creature and object has a soul, and that those souls reincarnate between different forms. To that perspective, humanoid robots are a new companion life form, or perhaps even the natural evolution of humanity. Hence Eastern sci-fi will tend to blur the differences between robots and humans. Think "Astroboy", "Ghost in the Shell", the Iron Man Tetsuo films, etc etc.
Take two of these karate bots, hook them up to wireless brainwave control systems, and you've got the first steps toward a real-life Angelic Layer.
Moralistic media watchdogs would have you believe that humans are "weak" against media, and that censorship is needed for "protection". That viewpoint is utterly insulting crap.
The media (art, literature, movies, games, etc) is not our master. We are not mindless robots who can only follow orders. We are superior to all media. We are living human beings with free will and adaptable minds.
Blaming the media is the path of power-hungry tyrants who wish to make men into mindless robot servants. That can only happen if one willingly submits to their nonsense and lies. Never surrender your mental freedom.
Whoops, spoke too soon. Linux support is only planned for the future, not currently available.
Brainwave machine with Linux support:
www.IBVA.com
If Real Life is losing ground to crude simulations, then I'd be inclined to think that there is something very, very wrong with Real Life.
(random thoughts)
Geeks are still subconsiously operating under the assumption that "speaking up == getting beaten up by schoolyard bullies".
IMHO, the culture of the Japanese anime/manga industry has developed into something very "hacker-like".
Perhaps the greatest example of this is the Japanese doujinshi (fan-works) sub-culture. In Japan, amatuer production of titles based on commercial works is actively encouraged, even though such works are technically violations of intellectual property laws. A fan is permitted to use existing ideas, characters, and settings for his own stories, and even sell them for a profit to other fans. Side-stories, parodies, alternate scenarios, and even pornographic rewrites are all generally permitted; it is _extremely_ rare, if not almost impossible, for a commercial company to bar doujinshi of its works.
This has the beneficial effects of sustaining a steady fan-base for existing works, as well as creating potential skilled recruits for the professional industry. Indeed, many professional anime/manga creators start off in the doujinshi scene before "graduating" into creating original works, just like how many professional computer game designers start out writing FPS mods and small shareware programs.
Naturally, an industry that has grown to benefit from a "hacker-like" mentality would produce works that encourage and appeal to hackers. Thus the popularity of anime & manga among geeks.
At least that's my theory.
Try "Martial Beat" then, also by Konami.
Frankly, I LIKE the slower, meandering pace. I dislike comics that stuff each panel to the gills with exposition and word ballons, that insist on rushing the reader from one scene to another before they can properly enjoy it. Fred is basing his work on the Japanese manga style, and manga is generally slower paced and more visual than American comics anyway.
Really, what's to stop Linux from using Microsoft's own philosophy against it? Absorb DirectX into Linux, then make it perform even better under Linux than it ever did under Windows. That's sure to get the attention of at least the game developers and hardcore gamers.
"Fight fire with fire," as they say. I frankly don't have much interest in establishing Linux as a gaming and desktop OS, but I'm surprised at how the people that do care often end up handicapping their efforts under some deluded notion of maintaining OS "purity". Look, there is no such thing as "purity" when it comes to Linux, because its open source nature means that it is always changing. This "impurity" is in fact one of Linux's greatest strengths; it gives it an unparalled capacity to easily absorb new ideas and methods into itself. This advantage should be utilized to the fullest.
Consider this:
- The recipient has to pay for all the email he recieves, irregardles of whether he wanted it or not.
- The webmaster has to pay for all the page views he gets, irregardless of whether he wanted them or not.
Shouldn't it work the opposite way? Can't we come up with a new system/protocol that does so?
Or... swap the two existing systems? HTML emails are already a minor curse; perhaps we can somehow wrest a beneficial effect from it? And it shouldn't be too hard to develop an app that can use webspace as a means to communicate simple text messages to intended recipients only.
Okay, I'm rambling a bit, and I don't profess to be an expert on these subjects, and perhaps people are already too entrenched in how things are currently done, but geez, there's gotta be a better way to do all of this than the headache we have right now.