These numbers are still many many months away from being real. A LOT can happen in that time, as Sony can surely attest to. So before everyone starts being all happy about the 1.1mil supposed GameCubes to be released next March, everyone should think back to some of Sony's predictions nearly a year out about the launch #'s and see that a LOT can change.
I'll be far more interested to hear the launch #'s in say, January 2002.:)
1) Tom Duff sounds on the money with regards to the technical misconceptions...but an even bigger ever elusive problem:
2) "Pixar-level" animation in the end is not about polygon count, it's about COUNTLESS man-hours spent modelling, lighting, and animating....no card can ever replace that.
sigh...I'm still wondering whatever happened to Taligent and "Pink"....
Anyone remember that?...that at one point actually seemed like a MacOS-related thing I might actually use...heh.
1) Someone pointed out that a lot of the courses materials are currently already on the web, and this is VERY true! I'm surprised that people are so excited about seeing this happen from the standpoint that it's largely already happened.
2) Many people noted that this would be great for the people who can't "afford" to go to MIT. Well, at the risk of raising 1000 flames, what about the quality of the students you work with? Now I'm not about to judge MIT's admissions policies at all (that could easily start a 1000 message flame...heh), but I will say that personally, I have learned more from working with my fellow students of amazing initiative and intelligence, than from any course materials. IMHO, that would be the key thing missing from an "Open course". Not to say that there aren't capable people who aren't at MIT....again, that's an admissions issue. For example, I feel I've read far more interesting comments in Slashdot discussions than in the rote news article links posted... don't you? Would you be able to have the same levels of cooperative interaction with fellow students via the web of the same caliber of that of MIT students? I think it's doubtful, if due to no other reason than current constraints of the medium.
3) In reply to: "students would be able to view previous examinations, learn exactly what questions professors ask, and learn only those questions." Well, many many already do, as MANY classes have past exams already on the web for review. Guess what? It doesn't work.
4) The amount of work required to make these courses actually potentially credit worthy may be HELLISHLY massive. A couple people mentioned this already, and I just want to re-iterate that a number of the professors I've heard talk about this have mentioned that. Having to suddenly grade 5100 tests instead of 100?...eek! There goes any sort essay tests or anything similar. In any case, I have the feeling that that isn't going to happen any time soon, but it will stick to informative materials only.
5) Javac the great is ridiculously un-informed. "MIT lacks a strong fundamental general education curriculum. CS students start doing CS from day one." What nonsense. First, CS students do not even remotely start doign CS from day one...I don't even know what that means it's so ridiculous. I took one CS class in the second half of my freshman year. ONE of 8 or 9 freshman year classes were CS. Also, MIT has an amazing humanities department. Currently, for example, I'm double majoring in Computer Science AND a humanities (Film & Media Studies), and both departments are top-notch.
I simply can't agree enough with what ShaunC said here...
I think this is an EXCELLENT move on the part of Origin and EA. Why make a new continuously on-going monthly game from scratch instead when you have one with an existing fan-base and lore that you can simply revamp??
As an example, look at Asheron's Call. When Asheron's Call first debuted more than a year ago, it was a decent MMORPG. However, over the last year, with free monthly updates (unlike Everquest's BS expansion packs), Asheron's Call has continued to expand and grow and develop. Monthly, new quests are added, new weapons, new monsters, and about 5 or 6 months back they even re-did a lot of the light rendering in the graphics engine which made it look substantially better (IMHO, the best of all the existings MMORPGs).
In fact, one of the big problems lately with Asheron's Call has been the player communities' feeling that AC was being progressively less continuously developed and expanded as resources were moved within Turbine to work on AC2. This has been a great source of anxiety and frustration with the player community as a whole. "Why work on developing a character in a world that may just be deleted in a year?" is the common thought...while unlikely, what is more likely is that the amount of new monthly content will shrink down to next to nothing.
So why is everyone all bent out of shape over the UO2 cancellation?? If I were a UO player, I'd be ecstatic! I, for example, would far rather see Origin continue to re-vamp and update the game that I spend a lot of time monthly playing, than dump it, and go off to work on some new game, leaving me to wonder, why am I still playing? Instead, why not make the rendering engine fully 3D -- heck use the one they were working on for UO2! And, expand the world to, oh, twice the size!...add twice as more creatures!...fix all the bugs! And so on... No reason to start from scratch.
1) I for one want some better screenshots made available! I can't see a damn thing on those very very dark screenshots at 306x234???
I mean, is this supposed to be meaningful in any way?: http://216.105.168.97/cgi-bin/image-o-matic.cgi?do om2k/11.jpg
So close, but yet so far!...hehe...But this video clip is kinda cool.
2) Anyone know any concrete scheduling info. on Doom3?
3) So, how much do people think that Apple paid nVidia for the whole "out on Apple first" deal?
Agh!...If lose the items on my corpse on HG, I will be quite pissed. BTW, AC servers were taken off line for a bug hotfix. And, like 8hrs. later when they were finally put back up, right then MS's DNS dies!...egh!
Is far more stable. I mean 4.76 still crashes like CRAZY for me on almost every platform I've used it on.
Is far faster. Comparatively, it's still slower than I somehow seem to feel it *should* be. Especially after using IE every once in a while.
If Netscape released a MUCH faster and MUCH more stable version of Netscape 4.76, I'd love it. Three more minor feature requests to make it "perfect":
Had better bookmark management.
Was Navigator-only. I never use all the mail/newsgroups/composer/address book fluff. I got better apps for all that stuff on my win98 box (Eudora, Agent, DreamWeaver, and Outlook, respectively). I know I used to be able to just download Navigator, but didn't seem to see such last time I checked (could be wrong though).
There are four consoles coming out in roughly a period of two years starting this past winter and running through next winter. The Sega Dreamcast, the Sony Playstation2, the Nintendo GameCube, and the Microsoft Xbox.
I for one do not think that the market can stably support 4 consoles given current development and distribution models. Console game development is expensive in ramp-up learning time, and therefore companies will need to make decisions on what console they will make games for.
So now the question is, who will survive to the next iteration (it's approximately a 5 year cycle, so who will still be around in 6 years?). My money is on Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft. Sony and Nintendo for I think they will both make a lot of money off of their consoles, and Microsoft because while I don't necessarily think that they will make as much money, they can afford for at least one iteration not to.
Currently, at least, that's my guess...but then again, maybe the market CAN support 4 consoles and I am wrong....or perhaps I am still wrong, and it can only support 2?...
Yes, "Pi was amazing"...this is true...
But don't forget about Frank Miller! The Batman work he died was great...almost everything he's made I love. However, SinCity will always hold a special place in my heart:
This MP3 ridiculousness has reached an all time. CeBit is banning a compression/decompression scheme?! Oh my, has a mere codec become so dangerous as to threaten a conference?!
I just can't believe it...What would you think if SIGGRAPH banned jpeg? This insane!
I am admittedly a rather adamant computer-gamer as opposed to console gamer for a number of basic reasons:
Resolution: I hate -- absolutely HATE -- NTSC...it is just aweful and I am still amazed we tolerate it daily. Without even getting into the "Never The Same Color" problems of NTSC, the resolution is just crap...I can run Quake3 at 1280x1024 -- four times NTSC resolution...why would I ever play it on a console?
Controls: This may be getting better with the PSX2 and the next generation of consoles, but the single gamepad controls for a console are just annoying as hell after a while...sometimes I just want a mouse (for example, when playing Quake!). Any game that requires a keyboard?...gone! (therefore, if anyone wanted to perhaps make a retro text adventure game real cheap?...nope! Not that it would matter anyways, because it'd probably have to be unofficial (I doubt Sony would license such) and text sucks on TVs anyways) The PSX2 has some USB ports...hopefully that'll improve matters.
With that said, there will always be certain genres of games I will want to play on consoles rather than PCs. Sports games, racing games, and 2 person fighting games, I'd much rather play on a console. Real Time Strategy games (ala Starcraft), First Person Shooters, and adventure games, I'd much rather play on a PC...I mean seriously, how on earth can you play a RTS or FPS on something with no mouse and low resolution??
Ahwell, I suppose all those damn Pokemon games will keep the consoles indefinitely alive, and in fact, twice as popular gaming platforms as the PC.
I love old arcade games. As an avid computer and video game player, I regularly pull out MAME and play a round or two of an old Galaga ROM or similar...however, still, I can't play them for any long periods of time any more.
Perhaps this is sad, perhaps this is a sign of my mind getting riddled with the "blip-vert" super-short form of entertainment, even so, I where as emmett gets bored when he plays Starcraft for 10 min., I get bored now when I play Pacman for 10 min.
Emmett remarks: "the classic games always have had something that modern games seem to lack, and that's simplicity and fun". While I definitely agree that more 'modern' games are usually more complex, to me personally, that's a GOOD thing! I want a complex, rich, detailed world to play in -- Centipede just doens't cut it in this respect. In fact, I would encourage game designers/publishers to put even MORE though and depth into their games...for example, in using movie genres, there have been some damn 'horror'-ific games, there have been some hilarious games, but we still haven't figured out how to do a good 'drama' yet.
So I personally don't think necessarily that "simplicity and fun" are definitely linked. Are games more complex?...definitely. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Definitely not. Will there always be place for another Tetris variation? Sure.
I've been trying for the last month or so to get to napster.com with no avail. It's ALWAYS down...is this true, or is it just me??
Has anyone had any success getting to the website recently? Also, essentially what I'm looking for is a real world snail mail address for them, which I remember seeing in San Mateo, CA once a while ago, right?
I can type faster than I can write. I can talk faster than I can type. I can think faster than I can talk.
So it would seem to me, as if they are looking in the wrong direction. Given that I can already type, and reading one's thoughts it still a sci-fi fantasy (and may possibly/probably always be), what about voice recognition. That seems to be getting better and better...
Re:Proof that .com companies are still overvalued
on
CNET Buys Ziff-Davis
·
· Score: 1
I'm still amazed AOL bought TimeWarner and not the other way around!
Wow! I wonder how/when they're going to consolidate all their corresponding websites that ZDNet and C|Net have. Like ZDNet has GameSpot and C|Net has GameCenter. Under which domain name will they merge? WILL they merge? When will this all happen? How will the content be merged?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I think it's just damn funny.
Razorfish has always been SUPER-pretentious about the amazing quality of what they do, and more importantly, what they do: r a z o r f i s h provides strategic, creative, and technology solutions to some of the world's most successful digital businesses. We partner with our clients to plan, design and build products and services that shape the way the world perceives and interacts with your company. Oh god, shut up! YOU MAKE WEBSITES. Don't try to pull it off as some amazing revolutionary concept. But from their website, here's my favorite sentance: "The marketplace is full of e-consultants that provide e-solutions to your e-business - but not a single one can provide you with the breadth and the depth that we can." Well, that's just e-damn e-funny as all e-hell.
Now, to be fair, they have in the past made some damn good websites (but remember they are just that, websites). So my guess (and this is a guess)?...they made some money, expanded, took on more clients than their original good staff could handle, and their new staff wasn't up to par with the old, so this assignment got handed off to some fresh recruits who didn't do a good job, and now the company is pissed, because they saw all the other flashy websites that Razorfish has done in the past.
Of course, I could be completely wrong, but I'm guessing it's a growth vs. quality problem internal to Razorfish that they are not handling properly.
Yeah, it looks like I was probably right in the "new story" aspect being the resolution. For example, the Inspeck device has a resolution of 1.1mm. The Stanford people's research at 0.05mm blows that away...but still, I don't really know what's new about it, mostly because I'm having lots of trouble getting through to the linked document. Looks like graphics.stanford.edu wasn't ready to be slashdotted.:(
Slashdot Mirror
I'll be far more interested to hear the launch #'s in say, January 2002. :)
1) Tom Duff sounds on the money with regards to the technical misconceptions...but an even bigger ever elusive problem: 2) "Pixar-level" animation in the end is not about polygon count, it's about COUNTLESS man-hours spent modelling, lighting, and animating....no card can ever replace that.
sigh...I'm still wondering whatever happened to Taligent and "Pink".... Anyone remember that?...that at one point actually seemed like a MacOS-related thing I might actually use...heh.
I whole-heartedly agree.
As an MIT student, a couple quick notes:
1) Someone pointed out that a lot of the courses materials are currently already on the web, and this is VERY true! I'm surprised that people are so excited about seeing this happen from the standpoint that it's largely already happened.
2) Many people noted that this would be great for the people who can't "afford" to go to MIT. Well, at the risk of raising 1000 flames, what about the quality of the students you work with? Now I'm not about to judge MIT's admissions policies at all (that could easily start a 1000 message flame...heh), but I will say that personally, I have learned more from working with my fellow students of amazing initiative and intelligence, than from any course materials. IMHO, that would be the key thing missing from an "Open course". Not to say that there aren't capable people who aren't at MIT....again, that's an admissions issue. For example, I feel I've read far more interesting comments in Slashdot discussions than in the rote news article links posted... don't you? Would you be able to have the same levels of cooperative interaction with fellow students via the web of the same caliber of that of MIT students? I think it's doubtful, if due to no other reason than current constraints of the medium.
3) In reply to: "students would be able to view previous examinations, learn exactly what questions professors ask, and learn only those questions." Well, many many already do, as MANY classes have past exams already on the web for review. Guess what? It doesn't work.
4) The amount of work required to make these courses actually potentially credit worthy may be HELLISHLY massive. A couple people mentioned this already, and I just want to re-iterate that a number of the professors I've heard talk about this have mentioned that. Having to suddenly grade 5100 tests instead of 100?...eek! There goes any sort essay tests or anything similar. In any case, I have the feeling that that isn't going to happen any time soon, but it will stick to informative materials only.
5) Javac the great is ridiculously un-informed. "MIT lacks a strong fundamental general education curriculum. CS students start doing CS from day one." What nonsense. First, CS students do not even remotely start doign CS from day one...I don't even know what that means it's so ridiculous. I took one CS class in the second half of my freshman year. ONE of 8 or 9 freshman year classes were CS. Also, MIT has an amazing humanities department. Currently, for example, I'm double majoring in Computer Science AND a humanities (Film & Media Studies), and both departments are top-notch.
Just a couple quick notes...
I simply can't agree enough with what ShaunC said here...
I think this is an EXCELLENT move on the part of Origin and EA. Why make a new continuously on-going monthly game from scratch instead when you have one with an existing fan-base and lore that you can simply revamp??
As an example, look at Asheron's Call. When Asheron's Call first debuted more than a year ago, it was a decent MMORPG. However, over the last year, with free monthly updates (unlike Everquest's BS expansion packs), Asheron's Call has continued to expand and grow and develop. Monthly, new quests are added, new weapons, new monsters, and about 5 or 6 months back they even re-did a lot of the light rendering in the graphics engine which made it look substantially better (IMHO, the best of all the existings MMORPGs).
In fact, one of the big problems lately with Asheron's Call has been the player communities' feeling that AC was being progressively less continuously developed and expanded as resources were moved within Turbine to work on AC2. This has been a great source of anxiety and frustration with the player community as a whole. "Why work on developing a character in a world that may just be deleted in a year?" is the common thought...while unlikely, what is more likely is that the amount of new monthly content will shrink down to next to nothing.
So why is everyone all bent out of shape over the UO2 cancellation?? If I were a UO player, I'd be ecstatic! I, for example, would far rather see Origin continue to re-vamp and update the game that I spend a lot of time monthly playing, than dump it, and go off to work on some new game, leaving me to wonder, why am I still playing? Instead, why not make the rendering engine fully 3D -- heck use the one they were working on for UO2! And, expand the world to, oh, twice the size!...add twice as more creatures!...fix all the bugs! And so on... No reason to start from scratch.
My $1.95...
I mean, is this supposed to be meaningful in any way?: http://216.105.168.97/cgi-bin/image-o-matic.cgi?d
So close, but yet so far!...hehe...But this video clip is kinda cool.
2) Anyone know any concrete scheduling info. on Doom3?
3) So, how much do people think that Apple paid nVidia for the whole "out on Apple first" deal?
Agh!...If lose the items on my corpse on HG, I will be quite pissed. BTW, AC servers were taken off line for a bug hotfix. And, like 8hrs. later when they were finally put back up, right then MS's DNS dies!...egh!
If Netscape released a MUCH faster and MUCH more stable version of Netscape 4.76, I'd love it. Three more minor feature requests to make it "perfect":
I for one do not think that the market can stably support 4 consoles given current development and distribution models. Console game development is expensive in ramp-up learning time, and therefore companies will need to make decisions on what console they will make games for.
So now the question is, who will survive to the next iteration (it's approximately a 5 year cycle, so who will still be around in 6 years?). My money is on Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft. Sony and Nintendo for I think they will both make a lot of money off of their consoles, and Microsoft because while I don't necessarily think that they will make as much money, they can afford for at least one iteration not to.
Currently, at least, that's my guess...but then again, maybe the market CAN support 4 consoles and I am wrong....or perhaps I am still wrong, and it can only support 2?...
Batman 1 & 2: Great character, great production design, great music, great stories...overall GREAT movies.
Batman 3 & 4: Throwaway characters, uneven production design, bad music, and horrible stories...overall BAD movies.
As an aside: Batman 1 & 2, directed by Tim Burton. Batman 3 & 4, not. Coincidence? ;)
But don't forget about Frank Miller! The Batman work he died was great...almost everything he's made I love. However, SinCity will always hold a special place in my heart:
And I was actually hoping to get a seat in Bartos...damnit!
I just can't believe it...What would you think if SIGGRAPH banned jpeg? This insane!
Beware the dangerous codec!!!
With that said, there will always be certain genres of games I will want to play on consoles rather than PCs. Sports games, racing games, and 2 person fighting games, I'd much rather play on a console. Real Time Strategy games (ala Starcraft), First Person Shooters, and adventure games, I'd much rather play on a PC...I mean seriously, how on earth can you play a RTS or FPS on something with no mouse and low resolution??
Ahwell, I suppose all those damn Pokemon games will keep the consoles indefinitely alive, and in fact, twice as popular gaming platforms as the PC.
My mistake!
...I was wondering if anyone would get that.
Perhaps this is sad, perhaps this is a sign of my mind getting riddled with the "blip-vert" super-short form of entertainment, even so, I where as emmett gets bored when he plays Starcraft for 10 min., I get bored now when I play Pacman for 10 min.
Emmett remarks: "the classic games always have had something that modern games seem to lack, and that's simplicity and fun". While I definitely agree that more 'modern' games are usually more complex, to me personally, that's a GOOD thing! I want a complex, rich, detailed world to play in -- Centipede just doens't cut it in this respect. In fact, I would encourage game designers/publishers to put even MORE though and depth into their games...for example, in using movie genres, there have been some damn 'horror'-ific games, there have been some hilarious games, but we still haven't figured out how to do a good 'drama' yet.
So I personally don't think necessarily that "simplicity and fun" are definitely linked. Are games more complex?...definitely. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Definitely not. Will there always be place for another Tetris variation? Sure.
Has anyone had any success getting to the website recently? Also, essentially what I'm looking for is a real world snail mail address for them, which I remember seeing in San Mateo, CA once a while ago, right?
I can talk faster than I can type.
I can think faster than I can talk.
So it would seem to me, as if they are looking in the wrong direction. Given that I can already type, and reading one's thoughts it still a sci-fi fantasy (and may possibly/probably always be), what about voice recognition. That seems to be getting better and better...
I'm still amazed AOL bought TimeWarner and not the other way around!
And so on...
Razorfish has always been SUPER-pretentious about the amazing quality of what they do, and more importantly, what they do:
r a z o r f i s h provides strategic, creative, and technology solutions to some of the world's most successful digital businesses. We partner with our clients to plan, design and build products and services that shape the way the world perceives and interacts with your company.
Oh god, shut up! YOU MAKE WEBSITES. Don't try to pull it off as some amazing revolutionary concept. But from their website, here's my favorite sentance: "The marketplace is full of e-consultants that provide e-solutions to your e-business - but not a single one can provide you with the breadth and the depth that we can." Well, that's just e-damn e-funny as all e-hell.
Now, to be fair, they have in the past made some damn good websites (but remember they are just that, websites). So my guess (and this is a guess)?...they made some money, expanded, took on more clients than their original good staff could handle, and their new staff wasn't up to par with the old, so this assignment got handed off to some fresh recruits who didn't do a good job, and now the company is pissed, because they saw all the other flashy websites that Razorfish has done in the past.
Of course, I could be completely wrong, but I'm guessing it's a growth vs. quality problem internal to Razorfish that they are not handling properly.
A lot?
I'm shocked...seriously, I'd be really curious to hear if anyone specifically knows of any large projects in recent time that have written in Pascal?
Yeah, it looks like I was probably right in the "new story" aspect being the resolution. For example, the Inspeck device has a resolution of 1.1mm. The Stanford people's research at 0.05mm blows that away...but still, I don't really know what's new about it, mostly because I'm having lots of trouble getting through to the linked document. Looks like graphics.stanford.edu wasn't ready to be slashdotted. :(