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I think a properly-implemented text parser could result in a more immersive experience than the typical point-and-click interface. But my vision of this is basically a complete melding of an IF game with a graphical adventure game (AG) - you type everything in with the keyboard like in IF, and watch the events play out on the screen like in an AG.

In my limited experienced with adventure games using text parsers, I've noticed the following shortcomings:

1. Most parsers are fairly limited. Take a look at some IF games made with Inform. You can pretty much type anything in and the game understands what you mean.

2. Moving around is extremely clunkly. Switching between the keyboard and mouse isn't really a "true" text parser experience and is a nuisance for the player. But I also have issues with using the arrow keys. It still takes your hand out of the typing position, and as a result I find it just about as bad as using the mouse.

Of course the problem stems from the fact that there's no clear "north, south, east, west" in an AG. Some way needs to be found to label the exits so you can simply type something like "exit <exit 1>" or "go to <exit 1>" or even just "<exit 1>".

3. For similar reasons as #2, interacting with objects in the room also becomes quite clunky and tedious. Normally you have to move the character into "position" or move the character's gaze around to "focus" on the object you're trying to interact with. Also, there's the potential problem of actually identifying what it is you want to interact with. In IF it's literally spelled out for you, but in an AG it may not be so obvious unless you're somehow able to bring up hotspots.

Of course, in IF there really isn't any notion of movement within one room. By reading the room description, you identify an object of interest and can immediately start acting on it. Consider how easy the following actions unfold in IF, and how much work is required in a typical AG with a text parser to do the same thing. Maybe I'm being too fussy, but it'd be nice to somehow make the experience be similar.

"You're in a room with a desk."
> l at desk
"There's a sheet of paper on the desk."
> l at paper
"The paper appears to have something written on it."
> read paper
(picking up the paper first)
"The paper says 'See how easy this was?'"
> n

Forget the government.

OK, fine, you're entitled to feel this way. I would only comment that if you choose not to play a part in the way you're governed or understand all the issues at play, then you really shouldn't complain when things don't go your way.

as for B) check your own D). You've answered your own question.

I don't really see how one refutes the other. Most systems fail when deliberate attempts are made to deceive it. If anything, I'd this this means you should avoid being an early-adopter until all the loose ends fall out - but I'd say this goes for anything. In the end, Vioxx still probably helped more people than it harmed. What's unfortunate is that, since Merck may have withheld information, it wasn't possible to avoid using the drug on people that may have reacted adversely to it. Certainly they should be held accountable for this and see if the system can be improved to prevent something like this in the future. But I'm not gonna throw out the baby with the bath water.

Let it be...

Fair enough (whoever may have said it!).

I used to bother with that crap. Then I experienced this firsthand:

So what did you do after that? Encourage others to do the same to show that the issue mattered to more people than just yourself? Organize a grass-roots campaign to get people to vote against him the next time he was up for election? Contribute to organizations and campaigns that supported the opposing viewpoint? Or just give up? In order to cause change, you need to make him care - by showing him that you can throw him out of office if he doesn't listen. No one claimed that this is easy.

And I still don't care if they say it's ready or not, or if they say it's safe or not.

So, if experts in the field aren't competent to decide this, then who is?

What's the purpose of linking to the Phase IV article, that plainly says this:

What Snarky said. Every new drug comes to market with the long-term side affects not clearly known, and Gardasil is no different. I don't see what your issue is with this particular drug being "untested."

Note that Vioxx was pulled AFTER several negligent death lawsuits!!!!

Yes, and there's more to the Vioxx case than "the drug got approved and then killed people." Merck may have misrepresented their test results in order to gain approval in the first place. This doesn't necessarily mean a fault in the system, only that Merck lied to get their drug approved.

Actually, I think this is what I was thinking of. Thanks for the link!

A game designer's primary concern should be inventive gameplay, not gimmicky interfaces and new technology.

So everyone, go unplug your Wii's and toss them in the garbage.

Some games are clearly set up to work better than others for such things, but I didn't have time to make the characters in Mind's Eye fleshed out enough or the world real enough to make a parody really worthwhile or interesting.

I don't know, I think I could find a way to poke a little fun at a character that can slice through things with his toenails!

It's not conspiracy theory ...

Unless you are A) Rich or famous, and B) a member of some clandestine organization like the Masons or the Skull and Bones, you will never get elected, even if you match all the qualifications and have a hundred and sixty years of significant collegiate experience under your belt.

OK.

Actually, I think our government's "hidden agenda" is to hide the fact that we're still secretly governed by the British Crown. That whole Revolutionary War thing was just a big sham to keep us from really try to rebel. As always, we're just slaves to The Man.

Come on, everyone join in with me!

"God save our gracious Queen
Long live our noble Queen ..."

Look further down at the explanation of the drug's testing phase. Nothing is known about it's long term effects yet, and it's not even a completely sure thing that it does any good... or doesn't do any harm, as it were.

Ever here of phase 4 testing?

Phase IV trials involve the post-launch safety surveillance and ongoing technical support of a drug ... designed to detect any rare or long-term adverse effects over a much larger patient population and timescale than was possible during the initial clinical trials.

You might also find this interesting (quoted from this article):

The drug is also approved for use in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and countries of the European Union ....

... A panel of experts, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, gave their approval for the vaccination of Gardasil on children as young as 9 years old. The ACIP recommended that Gardasil be placed on the childhood immunization schedule at the 11 to 12 year old visit. They also recommended that the vaccine be included in the federal Vaccines for Children Program, which would provide the vaccines free of charge to children under the age of 18 who are uninsured.

Legislation has been introduced in the state of Michigan to require Gardasil. If passed, this would make them the first state to require that its school children be vaccinated.

Australia's government announced on 29 Nov 2006 that they will provide this vaccination to all 12-26 year-old girls in 2007. After two years, the program will be scaled down to 12-13 year old girls only. Australia also approved Gardasil for boys 9-15 years old, but Australia is not providing government funding for vaccinating boys.

To suggest that schoolgirls are being turned into guinea pigs for an untested and unapproved drug is just uninformed.

How about this (from this article)?

Of the more than 120 known HPV types, 37 are known to be transmitted through sexual contact. Infection with sexually transmitted HPVs is very common in adult populations worldwide.

Or this (from this article)?

Genital HPV infection is very common, with estimates suggesting that up to 75% of women will become infected with one or more of the sexually transmitted HPV types at some point during adulthood.

I think the case can be made that this is a rather widespread health issue. And I don't see why the fact that this disease is transmitted through sexual contact (as well as other ways) should have anything to do with whether vacciniation should be mandatory or not.

Perhaps you're upset that the Texas governor bypassed the state legislature through an executive order, or that it appears he's in Big Pharma's pockets? OK, that's valid. Then I encourage you to do something about it: contribute to foundations working for campaign finance reform, write letters to your local government representatives and encourage others to do so. There's one thing that influences politicians more than money: the fear of not being re-elected. "By the people, for the people" sounds all well and good, but it does require "the people" getting off their asses and making their will known.

It's politicians are making decisions, not America!

No doubt. I mean, seriously, what's the point of all those elections?

Wasn't this inspired by the Dogma Manifesto?

I didn't read the whole thing (it is a bit long-winded), but I think the point is less "commercial games are evil" and more trying to shift emphasis away from glitzy (and expensive) graphics and special effects and instead focus on gameplay and storytelling. I think this article does a good job of putting the issue into perspective. Basically, as "glitziness" (graphics, sfx, etc.) go up -> development costs go up -> experimentation/innovation go down.

In a way I agree with GarageGothic. There's a reason why there are so many FPS and RTS clones on the shelves: that's what sells. Supply meets demand. Instead of trying to make developers force new types of games onto the consumer, I think consumers need to be encouraged to ignore all the hype and try something different.

Condolences on your loss. Kind of a lousy time of year, but I guess there never is a good time.

That looks like a fun party! But is that just orange juice you two are drinking?

I've got melting cheese underneath my flabby armpits, check it out!

I bet that's handy for making sandwiches. Or ... uh ... maybe not ... ?

What's wrong with Mac, Nik? In fact, I've seriously been considering "switching sides."

Meh, I don't know that Apple is any more benevolent than Microsoft, they just have that "underdog" appeal. I mean, look at iTunes. I wouldn't trust either of them.

I assure you ... if Macs had the user-base that PCs have, they'd be just as virus prone.

It seems like a lot of articles feel that Vista will basically be a flop, making this "The Year of Linux" or "The Year of the Mac." Don't know about all that, but it'd be interesting to see how Apple would fare if they shifted roles with Microsoft (or even just grabbed significant market share). I think we'd see claims like "114,000 Viruses? Not on a Mac." go away quickly.

The longstanding fallacy of copy protection is that a hacked copy is almost always better than the original.

Word!

For those that care, an interesting article here looking at the battle between piracy and DRM. It looks at "the portion of revenue that is due to AACS protection" that the studios are so desperate to get, pointing out that this may actually be a negative number. In other words, the studios may be spending all this money on DRM so they can ... lose more money. That thought makes me smile.

I've used Vista for over a month, and it has crippled me in no way whatsoever.

None of the hardware (and much of the software) out there right now has been specifically designed to be "Vista compliant." The white paper points out what fully-compliant devices may look like:

Once a weakness is found in a particular driver or device, that driver will have its signature revoked by Microsoft, which means that it will cease to function .... What this means is that a report of a compromise of a particular driver or device will cause all support for that device worldwide to be turned off until a fix can be found.

Windows' anti-piracy component, WGA, is tied to system hardware components.  Windows allows you to make a small number of system hardware changes after which you need to renew your Windows license .... If a particular piece of hardware is deactivated (even just temporarily while waiting for an updated driver to work around a content leak) and you swap in a different video card or sound card to avoid the problem, you risk triggering Windows' anti-piracy measures, landing you in even more hot water.

Vista's content protection requires that devices (hardware and software drivers) set so-called "tilt bits" if they detect anything unusual.  For example if there are unusual voltage fluctuations, maybe some jitter on bus signals, a slightly funny return code from a function call, a device register that doesn't contain quite the value that was expected, or anything similar, a tilt bit gets set.  Such occurrences aren't too uncommon in a typical computer .... Previously this was no problem - the system was designed with a bit of resilience, and things will function as normal ....  With the introduction of tilt bits, all of this designed-in resilience is gone.  Every little (normally unnoticeable) glitch is suddenly surfaced because it could be a sign of a hack attack, with the required reaction being that "Windows Vista will initiate a full reset of the graphics subsystem, so everything will restart".  The effect that these tilt bits will have on system reliability should require no further explanation.

In order to prevent tampering with in-system communications, all communication flows have to be encrypted and/or authenticated ....  Needless to say, this extremely CPU-intensive mechanism is a very painful way to provide protection for content, and this fact has been known for many years.

In order to prevent active attacks, device drivers are required to poll the underlying hardware every 30ms to ensure that everything appears kosher.  This means that even with nothing else happening in the system, a mass of assorted drivers has to wake up thirty times a second just to ensure that... nothing continues to happen.

I don't know, I guess it remains to be seen what the actual impact is on the user, but it seems pretty messy to me, and it looks like most of this will be going on regardless of whether or not you're even actually playing HD content. An awful lot of goodwill will be riding on Microsoft and hardware developers to not enforce the specification to its full extent.

Just watch HD-DVD on a normal player and be done with it. IMO HD is overrated.

This is really isn't a solution. HD DVDs won't play on a normal player. And in February 2009, the US will stop broadcoasting analog TV signals. So I'll either need to get a digital-to-analog converter or go buy an HDTV if I want to continue watching TV. Whether I want to or not, at some point I'll need to buy into this technology.

Or consider when Vista gets widely deployed. Hardware manufacturers will need to develop "Vista compatible" hardware. That means supporting the above-described "features," licensing HDCP and AACS for their devices and implementing all the cryptography into their hardware, and other potential expenses mentioned in the white paper. Whether you're running Linux, or even using Vista and plan on never playing any HD content, you're still paying for all of this in the cost of the device.

I don't blame MS for this one, though, it's the fault of the HD DVD consortium and the movie studios. MS don't really have a lot of choice but to support the security systems, same as any other player device.

He actually addresses this exact point in his white paper. Whether you agree with it or not, I guess that's another matter. But I think he makes a good point:

4. Microsoft is only doing this because Hollywood/the music industry is forcing them to.

"We were only following orders" has historically worked rather poorly as an excuse, and it doesn't work too well here either.  While it's convenient to paint an industry that sues 12-year-old kids and 80-year-old grandmothers as the scapegoat, no-one's holding a gun to Microsoft's head to force them do this.  The content industry is desperate to get its content onto PCs, and it would have quite easy for Microsoft to say "Here's what we'll do with Vista, take it or leave it.  We won't seriously cripple our own and our business partners' products just to suit your whims".  In other words they could make it clear to Hollywood who's the tail and who's the dog.

Here's an illustrative story about what can happen when the content-industry tail tries to wag the dog.  About 10-15 years ago, music companies told a bunch of NZ TV stations that they had to pay fees in order to screen music videos.  The TV stations disagreed, saying that they were providing free advertising for the music companies, and if they didn't like that then they'd simply stop playing music videos.  So they stopped playing all music videos.

After a few weeks, cracks stated to appear as the music companies realised just how badly they needed the TV channels.  One of the music companies bought an entire prime-time advertising block (at phenomenal cost, this wasn't a single 30-second slot but every slot in an entire prime-time ad break) just to play one single new music video.

Shortly afterwards, music videos reappeared on TV.  The details of the settlement were never made public, but I imagine it consisted of a bunch of music company execs on their knees begging the TV stations to start playing music videos again and let's please never bring this matter up again.

It's the same with Microsoft, the content industry needs them as badly (or more badly) than Microsoft needs the content industry.  Claiming that they're only following orders from Hollywood is a red herring - if Microsoft declined to implement this stuff, Hollywood would have to give in because they can't afford to lock themselves out of 95% of the market, in the same way that the music companies couldn't afford to cut out their primary advertising channel.

So I recently learned about this white paper, in which a New Zealand security analyst takes a look at the implications of how DRM is implemented in Windows Vista. It's a bit long and at times kind of technical, but I really think it's a worthwhile read to see just some of stuff that's going on behind-the-scenes in Vista.

The "short short" summary of the paper is: "The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history." And after reading through it, it really seems like Microsoft is trying to cripple your PC. All just so you can play HD movies on it. The worst part is that since Microsoft's policies impact hardware developers, everyone will end up feeling the effects of this. Really, all I can suggest is to at least skim through the paper and see some of the things he's talking about.

But I think the bigger story is that the arrival of HD media in general is just plain broken.

First, there's the issue of HDCP. Any device transmitting, receiving, or passing an HD signal through it must be compatible with HDCP encryption in order for you to actually see HD on your TV. The practical side of this is that pretty much everyone sitting here today - including those that may have already purchased "HD capable" devices - will have to upgrade to equipment that's compliant with HDCP.

The second part of this is AACS, which allows "compromised" HD devices to be put on a blacklist and stop working. So let's say some hacker uses the cryptographic keys from your model DVD player to make his own black-market player, or the company that made your player doesn't renew their AACS license, or the AACS licenser decides that the company that made your player "isn't doing enough" to protect HD content. That's right, for reasons totally beyond your control, your HD equipment could one day just suddenly stop working.

And of course the alleged purpose for all of this - to stop piracy - won't work, and in the end the honest customer is burdened with the additional cost of all of this "technology" that really does nothing. This article suggests a darker motive behind DRM, and I can't say that I disagree.

I'm really troubled by all of this. I'm prepared to move to Linux, but I don't really see Vista flopping. The majority of home users will end up using it as they upgrade their PCs (and Microsoft can force the issue by ending support for XP), so I don't see software developers and hardware manufacturers abandoning the platform. And as the US moves to HD within the next 10 years or so, sooner or later I'll be forced to purchase one of these DRM-hobbled devices. The consumer is being forced to support a technology that nobody wants and that doesn't work anyway. Really, what's a person to do? Thoughts anyone?

I agree with Jon and Big Nerd. Also his hands are a different color than his face. Does he have gloves on? And you may want to consider changing his last name.

Hey, I like that last one. Nice work.

One thing that does strike me a little odd about this is that there's paint splotches everywhere but the pictures aren't colored in. I think they end up getting kind of overlooked because they don't really stand out. I don't know, you might want to see how it looks if you colored in the cartoons using a kind of sloppy/messy paint style (don't know if there's a specific word for this). I think Andail was originally trying to suggest something like this. If you did this, you could probably actually lose the paint splotches behind the words, since I think the eye is naturally drawn to the letters anyway.

Just a thought, anyway.

I'd say KhrisMUC's paintover looks pretty dead-on, although the original was pretty good to begin with.

To me, it seems like the upstairs windows would be in a position to reflect a little bit of moonlight. I don't know, I may just be having perspective issues.

Seperating comercial ventures from the sort of scenario where I decide to make a game myself and sell it...

Actually you lost me here. I think it's pretty clear that Dave Gilbert, the El Ammo guys, and others(?) are trying to go commercial with - that is, make a living off of - their AGS games. Isn't this what you wanted to discuss? I don't think I'm aware of any cases of someone making a game and then just arbitrarily deciding to charge people for it.

How much do I need to make for it to be worth the drop in the number of people who end up playing it?

Well, in the commercial case, it's all about meeting your expenses. In that case you don't really care how many people play it, just how much money you're pulling in (although certainly those two numbers are related). It does seems like there's been some disagreement in the forums about how much - or even if - people should be charging for AGS games.

In the second case, it's a totally personal decision. But frankly, I'd say if you're just charging for your game in the hopes that a few people will give you some money, then you're basically indicating that you don't really care whether people play it or not. But like I said, I'm not aware of any examples of this - but please enlighten me if I'm wrong!

Of course, the marketing strategies for these two cases will be quite different, making direct comparison of numbers difficult.

If you stick together enough calculation power you can even crack 128-Bit codes in a reasonable time.

OK.

Sort of O/T, anyone interested in learning a little bit about computer security and privacy might enjoy listening to this podcast. It gets a bit technical sometimes, but it's pretty useful/interesting stuff IMO.

* Microsoft is an American company.

Of course, these guys are American, so I'm sure they work for one of our "more than two intelligence services" and can't be trusted after all. So never mind.

Meet James Pryce, hedge-fund tycoon - dealer in futures ... and beyond!



Even now he's facing down another tenuous position! Sell it all now? Or risk everything for those few extra percentage points? :o

I think you're seeing exactly why the Nazis and their followers have adopted these symbols: as an attempt to legitimize their thuggery and butchery by trying to link their ideology (if you can call it that) to early cultural origins and mythology.

I don't know how Scandinavians feel about all this (other than the couple of posts below), but offhand I'd say if a legitimate form of expression is in danger of being co-opted by extremists, then it's all the more reason to use that form of expession: to show that the extremists' interpretation is not the correct one.