I agree. I actually defended Spore here on Slashdot when it was the Great DRM Debate, I thought it was fun. But I got really fed up with it surprisingly quick. Designing creatures remained fun, but the core gameplay was just too...shallow.
I think it really deserved the "most overhyped game" awards it won.
I mean, you get 4 programs on your harddrive for the price of one - 1) SecureROM 2) Games for Windows LIVE 3) Rockstar Social Club 4) An early Beta version of some game
If anything Perl is just being relegated to what it's _really_ good at, and that's UNIX automation tasks and quick throw-away scripts, and _sometimes_ smallish applications. There's really no better language for these types of things.
I actually prefer Ruby for that sort of stuff, but maybe that's just me.;)
He's announcing it way too early. He has practically nothing to show. There's only one tiny code example that I can see to gauge its merits.
When he announced it on his blog a couple of months ago it he said it was in progress. He is still experimenting with the syntax and semantics of the language, so I think it is currently mostly interesting for those who want to discuss ideas and experiment themselves.
Ioke is cute, but there's just no really good reason for such a strange syntax
I'm not sure Ioke is the language for me, but I think it is interesting that he is experimenting with syntax and trying out new things. He has blogged about his reasons for using space as the method operator, and the consequences.
People who come up with "l33t" ideas like this need to be put on maintenance programming of code written by others for six months or so.
I've worked with Ola. Trust me, he's done plenty of maintenance programming over the years.:)
Crichton's point is it doesn't matter how many people *think* he's is wrong about climate change, it only takes one person to *prove* him wrong. Science isn't consensus, and nothing has been proven.
Yet when deciding what to do about potential problems, we have to take consensus into account....exactly for the reasons you state - that we can't know things with absolute certainty.
Now that the Republicans are out of the White House, expect the climate change crisis to conveniently fade away from the public consciousness.
US centric much? This is a global problem, discussed all over the world.
A HACK? Your opinion is wrong. Crichton was thought-provoking and insightful, and he was a gifted story-teller
No, the GP had it right. He was a hack, wrote thinly disguised straight-to-Hollywood scripts, and will soon be forgotten, your fanboy hissyfit nonwithstanding.
scientific "consensus" (which I never learned about when I was studying the scientific method)
Really? "A lot of respected scientists have a consensus on a topic" is pretty much the most certain we can be on a topic in science.
you'll actually see that the increase in temperature PRECEEDS the rise in CO2. So, though there does definitely seem to be a correlation, the conclusion drawn by Al and his "church" seems to be false simply by looking at the data.
This is well known and included in the theories.
That blows my mind because I watch the Weather Channel and they can't even get things right for the next week. If we've got models that can go out 10-50 years accurately, why the hell is the weather forecast still so bad?
All of the up and coming languages cited in the article are dynamically typed, interpreted (or bytecode-interpreted) languages.
Incorrect. Scala is very much statically typed (but has type inference).
Besides, what an article in a magazine considers hypeworthy may not correspond to real world usage. There are many opionions in the article put forward as facts.
These "other language on my interpreter" projects _seem_ really cool, but in practice it's usually simpler and faster (both development and performance wise) to use the languages in their own interpreters and use some IPC/RPC/web services/etc to communicate with.NET (or Java, or whatever) rather than trying to shoehorn your language onto the CLI or JVM.
In some cases JRuby is faster than the standard Ruby implementation. You also get access to all the services, tools, and existing libs of the JVM. It may also be easier to get it through the corporate iron wall - maintenance don't have to learn how to set up, deploy, tune and monitor a new environment, they just drop in a new jar file.
Don't know about Iron* since I try to stay away from the MS sphere, but there are quite a lot of successful JRuby apps up and running around the world, and Thoughtworks even developed an app for sale specifically based on JRuby: http://studios.thoughtworks.com/mingle-project-intelligence
What are they thinking with Call of Duty style regenerating health? Seriously... Deus Ex is not a run and gun game, it's a game that rewards resourcefulness and steathiness.
I had a brief fit of nerd-rage when I read this article. It occasionally sounded like they were turning it into a lame console shooter...even more than DX:IW. But It has the head writer from the first game back, and the community representative have allayed some of my fears.
When they said a "cover system" many people have taken that to mean it is going to be something like Gears of War, but apparently it is still a sneaky game. The sneak mechanics uses line of sight instead than light/shadow. Having only light/shadow could be a bit silly sometimes when you were crouching in a shadow spot in the middle of a open lawn just meters away from someone and they didn't see you. Personally I'd like a combination of the two mechanics, but maybe that is difficult/time consuming to implement.
They have also promised an open non-linear world this time, choice and consequences, good dialogue and characters. Also XP/upgrades, and that "Deus Ex 3 is an RPG. An action/RPG like the first one".
This has to be one of the most abused tags on Slashdot, attached to any freaking story with ANY connection to science, environment, education or religion.
Those who tagged this story, what are you even trying to say? People believe in global warming despite the evidence to the contrary? Or people disbelieve global warming despite the evidence to the contrary?
I'm betting the first, but either way, write a post you goddamn cowards, so people can see what you are trying to say and (god forbid) even come with a rebuttal.
Seriously. When do I get my next item/puzzle-based single player game?
Seriously, you can't have been looking very hard? There are oodles of current and upcoming classic adventure, puzzle, action/adventure/rpg games, even if they don't get much attention on mainstream sites:
Two whole Sam and Max seasons by Telltale games, their upcoming Wallace and Gromit game, Deus Ex 3 hopefully, Braid for PS3 or PC, DeathSpank by Ron Gilbert (Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle), Machinarium, World of Goo by 2D Boy, "realistic physics horror puzzler" Penumbra:Black Plague, the two classics Vampire:Bloodlines and Psychonauts (available on Steam), the horror adventure game Three Cards To Midnight by the people who made the Tex Murphy games (Under a Killing Moon etc).
There is also the Dracula, Sherlock Holmes games, though I hesitate to recommend them because didn't really connect with them when I played the demos.
Best site to keep track of good indie games and good PC games for the thinking man/woman- here.
KotOR is one of my favorite games of all time. The story is great, there's tons of stuff you can do off the beaten path, and it has a ton of replay value. The actual gameplay is subpar, though. KotOR 2 is one of my biggest disappointments of all time because it fixed the gameplay of KotOR but was so buggy and had so much cut content you couldn't actually enjoy it. A bastard child hybrid of the two might be the best game never made.
You know about the Sith Lords restoration project I hope? They are still active, but I'm starting to lose hope that they will ever finish, since new bugs pop up all the time. Perhaps they are in the final phase of playtesting, but... I have been waiting for many years now.
The massive multiplayer games could be tons of fun, but there's no way I'm putting down a subscription to play.
I haven't played it, but Guild Wars is subscription free and I'm sure there are others.
All the damn game publishers are trying to hit home runs all the time, like the movie industry. That sucks. I'd rather see a lot more variety out there, like in the '80s.
But there are plenty of PC indie developers out there who value innovation and gameplay ahead of OMGGRAPHICS!. These are some of the games I'm currently waiting with anticipation for: Ron Gilbert's (Monkey Islands etc) Deathspank. World of Goo by 2D Boy (puzzle game), Guitar Rising by Gametank (like Guitar Hero but you plug in a real electric guitar and learn to play for real!), Braid on the PC, Machinarium
And by more mainstream developers - bigger budgets and hotter graphics, but hopefully still great gameplay: Neverwinter Nights 2 - Storm of Zehir expansion (Obsidian), Alpha Protocol (Obsidian), Aliens RPG (you guessed it.... Obsidian. I'm a fanboy), Dragon Age (Bioware), Bioshock 2, Demigod, Mirror's Edge, Fear Origins, Wallace and Gromit adventure games (Telltale games, same gang that makes Sam and Max), Divine Divinity 2...
Re:It's not a game....
on
Review: Spore
·
· Score: 1
While it's a neat 'toy', for a *gamer* like myself it's ridiculous.
I've played games since 1984, and I'm having a blast with it.
People have been saying that since Playstation 1, and PC gaming is assuredly still not dying. If you count international and online sales, it is still the #1 platform. Sure, these days all consoles *taken together* beats it, but...
because people like to play games rather than wasting time on computer maintenece. I know what your opinion of us must be, but I get no joy out of installing new software or hardware so I can play the latest game.
Last two years I've upgraded my graphics card once, that's all, I've been able to play all the latest games (well, except Vista exclusive titles, all two of them.) Perhaps not at the highest graphics settings, but that is not important to me anyway.
I could definitely learn how to do that, but I much prefer plugging my console into the TV, putting the disc in, and playing immediately.....after a couple of minutes of loading you mean. I prefer to pay the one time cost of installing the game, and have almost instant load times of the game, and levels, later.
One episode in particular was where they were not allowed to say '*****'. They had to replace a prefectly fine medical term with 'genetic material'. It is a ******* show for pete's sake!
Potentially offensive words have been removed from your post for the sake of the children. Have a nice day.
As someone who has taken several of these - Java Associate is for those completely new to programming, if you can write anything above Hello World you won't need it.
Java Programmer is worth taking, and is mandatory to do the rest. Also worth it is Java Developer where you write a small app from a deliberately ambiguous specification and have to demonstrate that you understand the basics of threading, encapsulation etc.
Business Components is (last time I looked) based on old, heavyweight EJB 2, and a huge part of the exam consists of memorizing XML config files and the exact name and parameters of methods in the APIs. Not fun to learn, and not fun to work with. Web Components (servlets, JSP) is better, but that too has a little too much XML stuff and is getting a bit aged.
Slashdot Mirror
>>Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
>I like that. Is it original?
Unfortunately not. Friend had it in his mail signature, he saw it (or something like it) somewhere on the net, couldn't remember where.
So in other words... if you want something decent and fast, use Java???
Pretty much, yes. Welcome to the 21st century.
JRuby is an interpreter, written in Java. It does not compile Ruby to Java bytecode.
Incorrect. I certainly DOES compile Ruby to Java bytecode. Read the blogs of Charles Nutter, John Rose and Ola Bini for more information.
I agree. I actually defended Spore here on Slashdot when it was the Great DRM Debate, I thought it was fun. But I got really fed up with it surprisingly quick. Designing creatures remained fun, but the core gameplay was just too...shallow.
I think it really deserved the "most overhyped game" awards it won.
I mean, you get 4 programs on your harddrive for the price of one -
1) SecureROM
2) Games for Windows LIVE
3) Rockstar Social Club
4) An early Beta version of some game
Sounds like a great deal to me.
If anything Perl is just being relegated to what it's _really_ good at, and that's UNIX automation tasks and quick throw-away scripts, and _sometimes_ smallish applications. There's really no better language for these types of things.
I actually prefer Ruby for that sort of stuff, but maybe that's just me. ;)
He's announcing it way too early. He has practically nothing to show. There's only one tiny code example that I can see to gauge its merits.
When he announced it on his blog a couple of months ago it he said it was in progress. He is still experimenting with the syntax and semantics of the language, so I think it is currently mostly interesting for those who want to discuss ideas and experiment themselves.
Ioke is cute, but there's just no really good reason for such a strange syntax
I'm not sure Ioke is the language for me, but I think it is interesting that he is experimenting with syntax and trying out new things. He has blogged about his reasons for using space as the method operator, and the consequences.
People who come up with "l33t" ideas like this need to be put on maintenance programming of code written by others for six months or so.
I've worked with Ola. Trust me, he's done plenty of maintenance programming over the years. :)
Crichton's point is it doesn't matter how many people *think* he's is wrong about climate change, it only takes one person to *prove* him wrong. Science isn't consensus, and nothing has been proven.
Yet when deciding what to do about potential problems, we have to take consensus into account....exactly for the reasons you state - that we can't know things with absolute certainty.
Now that the Republicans are out of the White House, expect the climate change crisis to conveniently fade away from the public consciousness.
US centric much? This is a global problem, discussed all over the world.
A HACK? Your opinion is wrong. Crichton was thought-provoking and insightful, and he was a gifted story-teller
No, the GP had it right. He was a hack, wrote thinly disguised straight-to-Hollywood scripts, and will soon be forgotten, your fanboy hissyfit nonwithstanding.
scientific "consensus" (which I never learned about when I was studying the scientific method)
Really? "A lot of respected scientists have a consensus on a topic" is pretty much the most certain we can be on a topic in science.
you'll actually see that the increase in temperature PRECEEDS the rise in CO2. So, though there does definitely seem to be a correlation, the conclusion drawn by Al and his "church" seems to be false simply by looking at the data.
This is well known and included in the theories.
That blows my mind because I watch the Weather Channel and they can't even get things right for the next week. If we've got models that can go out 10-50 years accurately, why the hell is the weather forecast still so bad?
Weather is not the same thing as climate.
All of the up and coming languages cited in the article are dynamically typed, interpreted (or bytecode-interpreted) languages.
Incorrect. Scala is very much statically typed (but has type inference).
Besides, what an article in a magazine considers hypeworthy may not correspond to real world usage. There are many opionions in the article put forward as facts.
Oh, and I forgot:
I think it's more that IronPython is basically a vanity/research project, akin to JPython/Jython a few years ago
Jython has had a resurgence last year. Sun even hired Ted Leung towork on it full time.
http://www.sauria.com/blog/2008/03/03/the-sun-is-going-to-shine-on-python/
These "other language on my interpreter" projects _seem_ really cool, but in practice it's usually simpler and faster (both development and performance wise) to use the languages in their own interpreters and use some IPC/RPC/web services/etc to communicate with .NET (or Java, or whatever) rather than trying to shoehorn your language onto the CLI or JVM.
In some cases JRuby is faster than the standard Ruby implementation. You also get access to all the services, tools, and existing libs of the JVM. It may also be easier to get it through the corporate iron wall - maintenance don't have to learn how to set up, deploy, tune and monitor a new environment, they just drop in a new jar file.
Don't know about Iron* since I try to stay away from the MS sphere, but there are quite a lot of successful JRuby apps up and running around the world, and Thoughtworks even developed an app for sale specifically based on JRuby:
http://studios.thoughtworks.com/mingle-project-intelligence
What are they thinking with Call of Duty style regenerating health? Seriously... Deus Ex is not a run and gun game, it's a game that rewards resourcefulness and steathiness.
I had a brief fit of nerd-rage when I read this article. It occasionally sounded like they were turning it into a lame console shooter...even more than DX:IW. But It has the head writer from the first game back, and the community representative have allayed some of my fears.
When they said a "cover system" many people have taken that to mean it is going to be something like Gears of War, but apparently it is still a sneaky game. The sneak mechanics uses line of sight instead than light/shadow. Having only light/shadow could be a bit silly sometimes when you were crouching in a shadow spot in the middle of a open lawn just meters away from someone and they didn't see you. Personally I'd like a combination of the two mechanics, but maybe that is difficult/time consuming to implement.
They have also promised an open non-linear world this time, choice and consequences, good dialogue and characters. Also XP/upgrades, and that "Deus Ex 3 is an RPG. An action/RPG like the first one".
This begged the question of how we managed to run phone to every home with the much-smaller 1920's-1940's economy to draw on,
Nitpick: This didn't BEG the question, it RAISED the question. Begging the question is something different.
This has to be one of the most abused tags on Slashdot, attached to any freaking story with ANY connection to science, environment, education or religion.
Those who tagged this story, what are you even trying to say? People believe in global warming despite the evidence to the contrary? Or people disbelieve global warming despite the evidence to the contrary?
I'm betting the first, but either way, write a post you goddamn cowards, so people can see what you are trying to say and (god forbid) even come with a rebuttal.
Seriously. When do I get my next item/puzzle-based single player game?
Seriously, you can't have been looking very hard? There are oodles of current and upcoming classic adventure, puzzle, action/adventure/rpg games, even if they don't get much attention on mainstream sites:
Two whole Sam and Max seasons by Telltale games, their upcoming Wallace and Gromit game, Deus Ex 3 hopefully, Braid for PS3 or PC, DeathSpank by Ron Gilbert (Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle), Machinarium, World of Goo by 2D Boy, "realistic physics horror puzzler" Penumbra:Black Plague, the two classics Vampire:Bloodlines and Psychonauts (available on Steam), the horror adventure game Three Cards To Midnight by the people who made the Tex Murphy games (Under a Killing Moon etc).
There is also the Dracula, Sherlock Holmes games, though I hesitate to recommend them because didn't really connect with them when I played the demos.
Best site to keep track of good indie games and good PC games for the thinking man/woman- here.
KotOR is one of my favorite games of all time. The story is great, there's tons of stuff you can do off the beaten path, and it has a ton of replay value. The actual gameplay is subpar, though. KotOR 2 is one of my biggest disappointments of all time because it fixed the gameplay of KotOR but was so buggy and had so much cut content you couldn't actually enjoy it. A bastard child hybrid of the two might be the best game never made.
You know about the Sith Lords restoration project I hope? They are still active, but I'm starting to lose hope that they will ever finish, since new bugs pop up all the time. Perhaps they are in the final phase of playtesting, but... I have been waiting for many years now.
I thought they were going to discuss how Trolls are depicted in World of Warcraft. :)
The massive multiplayer games could be tons of fun, but there's no way I'm putting down a subscription to play.
I haven't played it, but Guild Wars is subscription free and I'm sure there are others.
All the damn game publishers are trying to hit home runs all the time, like the movie industry. That sucks. I'd rather see a lot more variety out there, like in the '80s.
But there are plenty of PC indie developers out there who value innovation and gameplay ahead of OMGGRAPHICS!.
These are some of the games I'm currently waiting with anticipation for:
Ron Gilbert's (Monkey Islands etc) Deathspank. World of Goo by 2D Boy (puzzle game), Guitar Rising by Gametank (like Guitar Hero but you plug in a real electric guitar and learn to play for real!), Braid on the PC, Machinarium
And by more mainstream developers - bigger budgets and hotter graphics, but hopefully still great gameplay:
Neverwinter Nights 2 - Storm of Zehir expansion (Obsidian), Alpha Protocol (Obsidian), Aliens RPG (you guessed it.... Obsidian. I'm a fanboy), Dragon Age (Bioware), Bioshock 2, Demigod, Mirror's Edge, Fear Origins, Wallace and Gromit adventure games (Telltale games, same gang that makes Sam and Max), Divine Divinity 2...
While it's a neat 'toy', for a *gamer* like myself it's ridiculous.
I've played games since 1984, and I'm having a blast with it.
All the reviews I've read about Spore have said the same thing - great toy, boring game.
An alternative, and well formulated viewpoint at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
Personally, I'm having a great time with it.
PC gaming is dying out
People have been saying that since Playstation 1, and PC gaming is assuredly still not dying. If you count international and online sales, it is still the #1 platform. Sure, these days all consoles *taken together* beats it, but...
because people like to play games rather than wasting time on computer maintenece. I know what your opinion of us must be, but I get no joy out of installing new software or hardware so I can play the latest game.
Last two years I've upgraded my graphics card once, that's all, I've been able to play all the latest games (well, except Vista exclusive titles, all two of them.) Perhaps not at the highest graphics settings, but that is not important to me anyway.
I could definitely learn how to do that, but I much prefer plugging my console into the TV, putting the disc in, and playing immediately. ....after a couple of minutes of loading you mean. I prefer to pay the one time cost of installing the game, and have almost instant load times of the game, and levels, later.
One episode in particular was where they were not allowed to say '*****'. They had to replace a prefectly fine medical term with 'genetic material'.
It is a ******* show for pete's sake!
Potentially offensive words have been removed from your post for the sake of the children. Have a nice day.
As someone who has taken several of these - Java Associate is for those completely new to programming, if you can write anything above Hello World you won't need it.
Java Programmer is worth taking, and is mandatory to do the rest. Also worth it is Java Developer where you write a small app from a deliberately ambiguous specification and have to demonstrate that you understand the basics of threading, encapsulation etc.
Business Components is (last time I looked) based on old, heavyweight EJB 2, and a huge part of the exam consists of memorizing XML config files and the exact name and parameters of methods in the APIs. Not fun to learn, and not fun to work with. Web Components (servlets, JSP) is better, but that too has a little too much XML stuff and is getting a bit aged.