The minor resurgence of interest in mechanical computers brought about by LBP is pretty cool, but I think Media Molecule could really latch onto this and offer some excellent DLC for the advanced users.
Mechanical computers are fun to watch, but they require lots of level space as well as complex physics simulation to perform even the most basic operations. Here's where an expansion pack could pick this trend up and run with it: Add the ability to build little breadboards with transistors. Now there's no physics overhead, and just imagine the stuff you could wire up!
And, while the game is plenty enjoyable on the PS3, the performance is still a bit behind the 360. You'll see lower framerates in big chases, and the whole thing's already running at a lower resolution than native 720p.
I've had exactly the same experience as the GP, going from an old PowerBook with a stunning (if a bit dim) screen to a MacBook Pro with a bright but hard-to-align screen.
From off angle, you can still make out text just fine, but you literally have about one to two degrees in which to hold your head where the panel shows the backlight evenly. Just slightly off to the top or bottom and that white page turns into a big, blue gradient.
Plug in a USB optical mouse some time and you'll be amazed at how much nicer it feels. The more accurate tracking afforded by the optical sensor combined with the vastly higher polling rate afforded by USB makes for a significantly more pleasant experience.
Of course, I haven't bought a new mouse since my optical, USB MS Intellimouse Explorer in 2001, but I'd say that's where mouse technology last froze.
Even that FUD about Linux infringing 200+ patents is nothing more than hot air.
If it's backed, however tepidly, by an army of Microsoft lawyers, does it still count as hot air?
Granted, Microsoft's stance is far removed from the sniping virulence of the average patent troll. Still, a troll's a troll, even if it's the lame level 5 in the dungeon entryway.
I've heard fantastic, mind-bending things about Multi Theft Auto.
Apparently, enthusiast game devs grafting on a real-time multiplayer component to a single-player game to which they don't have the source results in some, shall we say, interesting sync issues. My favorite story is where one guy suddenly gets replaced with a taxi on another guy's client. He still sees himself as a character, but the other guy sees him as a taxi just "walking" around.
"Get in me!" is of course the appropriate response, and upon their union the two have a strange and jittery ride down the street, until they get to the train station. They get on the train, which the taxi guy sees as a bouncy and jittery train ride, but the other guy sees as a taxi intersecting the train, grinding endlessly against the tunnel.
Finally, something breaks, and they're no longer constrained to the map's clipping, rocketing around the city, perhaps bi- or quad-locating, and it's time to reset the server.
A lot of people forget how generally unprecedented it was at the time for an action game to begin with half an hour of context and tone establishment instead of throwing you right into the fire.
Traveling through the massive subterranean tram network, checking in at the desk and grabbing your equipment to start what would have been a normal day's work... As the tension is slowly built, something goes wrong, and then aliens show up out of that, the effect is something vastly more profound than jumping into Quake and shooting stroggs straight off the bat.
I'd be willing to wager that you've used responsibly designed Flash applets before and simply assumed them to be cleverly implemented Javascript because they didn't explode all over the screen in a cavalcade of light and sound.
Nothing about Flash compels the developer or designer to author something "garish and obnoxious" any more than Javascript or CSS do. Its versatility merely allows for greater abuse.
To create the new windpipe, the team took a seven-centimeter (2.75-inch) segment of trachea from a 51-year-old who had died. Over a six-week period, the team then removed all the cells from the donor trachea, because those cells could lead to rejection of the organ after transplant.
While this procedure still does require a donor organ, it basically only uses the donor as a collagen framework to grow the patient's cells into.
Could the next step be fabricating the collagen frame, perhaps through 3D printing?
You, sir, have just described my dream for Sim City 9000.
It is a dream that will almost certainly never come from EA/Maxis (due in no small part to the the new direction represented by Sim City Societies), but you lay out a very plausible methodology for procedural urban synthesis.
Combine this organic growth with user-directed constraints, and you could have a very compelling simulation.
Obama doesn't owe any favors to companies or even to his own party.
Let's not be too hasty here: It's not like Obama didn't also receive major support from industry donors. So while we shouldn't discount that part of this victory is owed to our corporate overlords, we still, as you say, shouldn't discount that part is due to the folks in your neighborhood.
Money talks; let's hope the unprecedented small donations from individuals this time talked loudly enough.
This by itself may not be the breakthrough we're looking for. None of the other alternative energy stories on/. in the past few months may be either. But they keep coming, research continues in countless labs and studies across the globe, some things don't work, and others lead to more inquiry, and that's what is really important.
This will not be a puzzle solved by a single genius in a moment of discovery. It will be solved over time, by many talented people with many discoveries. But I think that's why it's safe to say it will be solved.
I know that there's plenty of time for this to change between now and release, but Aero's visual details continue to leave a vast amount to be desired.
There's simply far too much detail on elements that don't need it -- window borders, toolbars, status bars; everything seems to have about twice as many lines as are needed, with various controls popping up and down like the terraces of some ancient courtyard. This makes windows look more complicated than they should.
And don't get me started on the ridiculous transparency + airbrush titlebars. The first thing they should have done was to accept that the translucent window experiment failed (or at least to boost the opacity to ~90% like another company addicted to transparency learned to do), but the Windows UI team doesn't seem to have realized it yet.
"Yes, we were going to bring you a report from the private unveiling of the new Metal Gear Solid spinoff, but strangely we can't remember a thing. At least Konami served us some delicious wine and pastries, though!"
Everyone (yes, even the clueless people in charge) knows that electronic voting machines are SNAFU, they just didn't have the time/money to do anything about it this election cycle.
2010 should be much different.
Isn't that what we were saying in 2004 about how 2008 should be much different?
It's not an equivocation per se. I would presume that what you assert to be at issue (you don't specify) is the dilution of the term "belief" to cover subjects ranging from that with little empirical corroboration (religion) to that with significant empirical corroboration (accepted science).
As you see, though, these are shades of gray -- theory requires a greater leap of belief than that which is proven before one's eyes, just as logical philosophies of religion require less of a leap than do their core theistic entities.
Even across the smallest gap, though, to accept things as seemingly married to reality as the Pythagorean theorem, requires belief. It is a very small quantity of belief required for this -- but to assume you use none at all is to expend a great deal more.
I think you've hit on why the iPhone/Touch platform may very well explode as a third mobile gaming market.
You currently have three markets that center mostly around three different platforms:
Sony PSP: Core gaming - games solidly in traditional genres, generally geared toward longer play sessions.
Nintendo DS: Casual gaming - some traditional genres, some breakouts, geared toward shorter play sessions.
Java/BREW: Momentary gaming - traditional genres only appear in abbreviated form; intended for the shortest play sessions; greatly limited by non-game-friendly hardware.
Nokia made a pass at expanding this last slice of the pie with the N-Gage and failed because they didn't really advance far enough beyond industry-standard cell phone hardware.
But now here is Apple, who instead of selling a compromise between console and phone, is selling a brilliant phone that happens to double as a number of other things including a game console. Add to that a second model that doesn't require leaving your existing phone, and you can see how they're poised to grab this market and perhaps take a bit from their neighbor, Nintendo.
I was riding with my boss to a meeting a week or so ago, and we started talking about this prominent new landmark high-rise going up in the city.
He said something to the effect of "yeah, it would be nice to live there if you could afford it, but it would also be a target."
To which I said, "you know of course that what we're doing right now, driving on the highway, is statistically far more dangerous than living for years in that building?"
People who already own an HDTV and just lost 20% of their 401(k) last week aren't in the market to drop $1500 on a new HDTV. Maybe they can be convinced to buy a box for their existing one. But not a whole TV that's so close to what they already have, not in 2008.
People who don't yet own an HDTV are a more likely target market for this. And yet, these folks haven't had the disposable income to buy one so far -- with possible layoffs looming at their employers and rising expenses everywhere, why on earth are they going to buy not just an HDTV now, but a networked, Apple-branded one? Most definitely not in 2008.
If I invented the toaster, and my model required two minutes of winding a spring, calibrating the heating coils, balancing the ejection mechanism, and still burned the toast half the time, and then you invented a toaster where you just press a button and you get nice toast in 20 seconds, does that make you a lame imitator?
Are your satisfied customers who say "OMG dreamchaser's such a genius!" just lame fanbois? After all, I invented the toaster. You just made one for noobs who can't be bothered to calibrate their toasting device every morning.
Why on earth do they think your product is so cool?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they just overhauled the system complete with a protocol for explicitly citing the violation and an opportunity to edit and republish.
The minor resurgence of interest in mechanical computers brought about by LBP is pretty cool, but I think Media Molecule could really latch onto this and offer some excellent DLC for the advanced users.
Mechanical computers are fun to watch, but they require lots of level space as well as complex physics simulation to perform even the most basic operations. Here's where an expansion pack could pick this trend up and run with it: Add the ability to build little breadboards with transistors. Now there's no physics overhead, and just imagine the stuff you could wire up!
Rockstar only delayed release on the consoles because it had to release the two concurrently.
And, while the game is plenty enjoyable on the PS3, the performance is still a bit behind the 360. You'll see lower framerates in big chases, and the whole thing's already running at a lower resolution than native 720p.
I've had exactly the same experience as the GP, going from an old PowerBook with a stunning (if a bit dim) screen to a MacBook Pro with a bright but hard-to-align screen.
From off angle, you can still make out text just fine, but you literally have about one to two degrees in which to hold your head where the panel shows the backlight evenly. Just slightly off to the top or bottom and that white page turns into a big, blue gradient.
No security advantage, all annoyance.
It's not just hotkeys.
Plug in a USB optical mouse some time and you'll be amazed at how much nicer it feels. The more accurate tracking afforded by the optical sensor combined with the vastly higher polling rate afforded by USB makes for a significantly more pleasant experience.
Of course, I haven't bought a new mouse since my optical, USB MS Intellimouse Explorer in 2001, but I'd say that's where mouse technology last froze.
In a second hand book store?!
That's some fetish.
If it's backed, however tepidly, by an army of Microsoft lawyers, does it still count as hot air?
Granted, Microsoft's stance is far removed from the sniping virulence of the average patent troll. Still, a troll's a troll, even if it's the lame level 5 in the dungeon entryway.
I've heard fantastic, mind-bending things about Multi Theft Auto.
Apparently, enthusiast game devs grafting on a real-time multiplayer component to a single-player game to which they don't have the source results in some, shall we say, interesting sync issues. My favorite story is where one guy suddenly gets replaced with a taxi on another guy's client. He still sees himself as a character, but the other guy sees him as a taxi just "walking" around.
"Get in me!" is of course the appropriate response, and upon their union the two have a strange and jittery ride down the street, until they get to the train station. They get on the train, which the taxi guy sees as a bouncy and jittery train ride, but the other guy sees as a taxi intersecting the train, grinding endlessly against the tunnel.
Finally, something breaks, and they're no longer constrained to the map's clipping, rocketing around the city, perhaps bi- or quad-locating, and it's time to reset the server.
A lot of people forget how generally unprecedented it was at the time for an action game to begin with half an hour of context and tone establishment instead of throwing you right into the fire.
Traveling through the massive subterranean tram network, checking in at the desk and grabbing your equipment to start what would have been a normal day's work... As the tension is slowly built, something goes wrong, and then aliens show up out of that, the effect is something vastly more profound than jumping into Quake and shooting stroggs straight off the bat.
I'd be willing to wager that you've used responsibly designed Flash applets before and simply assumed them to be cleverly implemented Javascript because they didn't explode all over the screen in a cavalcade of light and sound.
Nothing about Flash compels the developer or designer to author something "garish and obnoxious" any more than Javascript or CSS do. Its versatility merely allows for greater abuse.
FTA:
While this procedure still does require a donor organ, it basically only uses the donor as a collagen framework to grow the patient's cells into.
Could the next step be fabricating the collagen frame, perhaps through 3D printing?
You, sir, have just described my dream for Sim City 9000.
It is a dream that will almost certainly never come from EA/Maxis (due in no small part to the the new direction represented by Sim City Societies), but you lay out a very plausible methodology for procedural urban synthesis.
Combine this organic growth with user-directed constraints, and you could have a very compelling simulation.
Is that you, Rowsdower?
Let's not be too hasty here: It's not like Obama didn't also receive major support from industry donors. So while we shouldn't discount that part of this victory is owed to our corporate overlords, we still, as you say, shouldn't discount that part is due to the folks in your neighborhood.
Money talks; let's hope the unprecedented small donations from individuals this time talked loudly enough.
I'm cautiously optimistic.
How would an in-flight entertainment system even run on Windows 3.1? What kind of entertainment would you be viewing?
Playing Cinepak-compressed video at 15 frames per second in 8 bit color? Maybe playing Minesweeper?
This by itself may not be the breakthrough we're looking for. None of the other alternative energy stories on /. in the past few months may be either. But they keep coming, research continues in countless labs and studies across the globe, some things don't work, and others lead to more inquiry, and that's what is really important.
This will not be a puzzle solved by a single genius in a moment of discovery. It will be solved over time, by many talented people with many discoveries. But I think that's why it's safe to say it will be solved.
I know that there's plenty of time for this to change between now and release, but Aero's visual details continue to leave a vast amount to be desired.
There's simply far too much detail on elements that don't need it -- window borders, toolbars, status bars; everything seems to have about twice as many lines as are needed, with various controls popping up and down like the terraces of some ancient courtyard. This makes windows look more complicated than they should.
And don't get me started on the ridiculous transparency + airbrush titlebars. The first thing they should have done was to accept that the translucent window experiment failed (or at least to boost the opacity to ~90% like another company addicted to transparency learned to do), but the Windows UI team doesn't seem to have realized it yet.
"Yes, we were going to bring you a report from the private unveiling of the new Metal Gear Solid spinoff, but strangely we can't remember a thing. At least Konami served us some delicious wine and pastries, though!"
Isn't that what we were saying in 2004 about how 2008 should be much different?
It's not an equivocation per se. I would presume that what you assert to be at issue (you don't specify) is the dilution of the term "belief" to cover subjects ranging from that with little empirical corroboration (religion) to that with significant empirical corroboration (accepted science).
As you see, though, these are shades of gray -- theory requires a greater leap of belief than that which is proven before one's eyes, just as logical philosophies of religion require less of a leap than do their core theistic entities.
Even across the smallest gap, though, to accept things as seemingly married to reality as the Pythagorean theorem, requires belief. It is a very small quantity of belief required for this -- but to assume you use none at all is to expend a great deal more.
Because of the fjords!
I think you've hit on why the iPhone/Touch platform may very well explode as a third mobile gaming market.
You currently have three markets that center mostly around three different platforms:
Sony PSP: Core gaming - games solidly in traditional genres, generally geared toward longer play sessions.
Nintendo DS: Casual gaming - some traditional genres, some breakouts, geared toward shorter play sessions.
Java/BREW: Momentary gaming - traditional genres only appear in abbreviated form; intended for the shortest play sessions; greatly limited by non-game-friendly hardware.
Nokia made a pass at expanding this last slice of the pie with the N-Gage and failed because they didn't really advance far enough beyond industry-standard cell phone hardware.
But now here is Apple, who instead of selling a compromise between console and phone, is selling a brilliant phone that happens to double as a number of other things including a game console. Add to that a second model that doesn't require leaving your existing phone, and you can see how they're poised to grab this market and perhaps take a bit from their neighbor, Nintendo.
I was riding with my boss to a meeting a week or so ago, and we started talking about this prominent new landmark high-rise going up in the city.
He said something to the effect of "yeah, it would be nice to live there if you could afford it, but it would also be a target."
To which I said, "you know of course that what we're doing right now, driving on the highway, is statistically far more dangerous than living for years in that building?"
He thought for a moment, and agreed with me.
Not in 2008. You basically have two markets here:
People who already own an HDTV and just lost 20% of their 401(k) last week aren't in the market to drop $1500 on a new HDTV. Maybe they can be convinced to buy a box for their existing one. But not a whole TV that's so close to what they already have, not in 2008.
People who don't yet own an HDTV are a more likely target market for this. And yet, these folks haven't had the disposable income to buy one so far -- with possible layoffs looming at their employers and rising expenses everywhere, why on earth are they going to buy not just an HDTV now, but a networked, Apple-branded one? Most definitely not in 2008.
If I invented the toaster, and my model required two minutes of winding a spring, calibrating the heating coils, balancing the ejection mechanism, and still burned the toast half the time, and then you invented a toaster where you just press a button and you get nice toast in 20 seconds, does that make you a lame imitator?
Are your satisfied customers who say "OMG dreamchaser's such a genius!" just lame fanbois? After all, I invented the toaster. You just made one for noobs who can't be bothered to calibrate their toasting device every morning.
Why on earth do they think your product is so cool?