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Comment As Successful as the Kellogg-Briand Pact (Score 1) 138

by Nova Express (#46954697) Attached to: The Struggle To Ban Killer Robots

You know, the pact to outlaw war. Signed in 1928.

Didn't work out so well.

And even if it were signed by a significant number of nations, we could be sure the non-democratic ones would be violating the ban before the ink was even dry.

Unenforceable treaties are actually worse than worthless: they constrain good actors without deterring bad ones.
Earth

US Climate Report Says Global Warming Impact Already Severe 627

Posted by Soulskill from the but-it-was-cold-yesterday dept.
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "Darryl Fears reports in the Washington Post on the U.S. government's newest national assessment of climate change. It says Americans are already feeling the effects of global warming. The assessment carves the nation into sections and examines the impacts: More sea-level rise, flooding, storm surge, precipitation and heat waves in the Northeast; frequent water shortages and hurricanes in the Southeast and Caribbean; more drought and wildfires in the Southwest. 'Residents of some coastal cities see their streets flood more regularly during storms and high tides. Inland cities near large rivers also experience more flooding, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. Insurance rates are rising in some vulnerable locations, and insurance is no longer available in others. Hotter and drier weather and earlier snow melt mean that wildfires in the West start earlier in the spring, last later into the fall, and burn more acreage. In Arctic Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded, and autumn storms now cause more erosion, threatening many communities with relocation.' The report concludes that over recent decades, climate science has advanced significantly and that increased scrutiny has led to increased certainty that we are now seeing impacts associated with human-induced climate change. 'What is new over the last decade is that we know with increasing certainty that climate change is happening now. While scientists continue to refine projections of the future, observations unequivocally show that climate is changing and that the warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases.'"

Comment Blindsight (Score 1) 105

by Nova Express (#46925749) Attached to: Computer Game Reveals 'Space-Time' Neurons In the Eye

Visual information controlling physical action without conscious thought. Think of it as a higher level of autonomous nervous system.

Peter Watts wrote a very depressing novel involving the idea which explores the possibility that consciousness is not necessary for intelligent life, and, indeed, may ultimately turn out to be an evolutionary dead end...
Earth

Let's Call It 'Climate Disruption,' White House Science Adviser Suggests (Again) 568

Posted by timothy from the let's-just-settle-on-nuclear-winter dept.
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "First there was 'global warming.' Then many researchers suggested 'climate change' was a better term. Now, White House science adviser John Holdren is renewing his call for a new nomenclature to describe the end result of dumping vast quantities of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases into Earth's atmosphere: 'global climate disruption.'"

Submission + - Star Wars: Episode VII Cast Officially Announced (starwars.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Word was leaking this week of some familiar faces in London hanging out together. Finally today an official cast listing was handed down from on high to us mere mortals (Google Cache and Onion AV recap available). From the short release, "Actors John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, and Max von Sydow will join the original stars of the saga, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Kenny Baker in the new film." Let's not bicker and argue about who shot first but instead come to an agreement on expected levels of almost certain disappointment. No, this will not feature the Expanded Universe (EU) — you can now refer to those tales as "Legends" which are not part of Star Wars canon. Instead prepare yourself for what will likely be the mother of all retcon films.

Comment Fall of the Republic, birth of the Empire. (Score 5, Insightful) 384

by donscarletti (#46860449) Attached to: How Concrete Contributed To the Downfall of the Roman Empire

The article itself quotes historians saying "One could even say that [concrete] played a significant role in bringing down the [Roman] Republic" due to concrete being used in Pompey and Caesar's civic building programs, then starts the title of the article "Downfall of the Roman Empire", which was a completely different sequence events that started centuries later.

The awkward truth of the matter here is, at the time she wrote the article, the author didn't realise that the historians quoted were describing the events that lead to the birth of the Roman Empire and not the death.

Comment Re:Easy answers (Score 1) 305

by donscarletti (#46822863) Attached to: 'The Door Problem' of Game Design

Am I the only one who finds arbitrary restrictions in games, either because the technology couldn't cope, or because the game designer knows how you want to play better than you do, or just because, really annoying? If there's a door there, it should open. If it won't open, there shouldn't be a door there. How hard is this?

Easy answer, almost impossible.

Buildings have doors, how many buildings do you want in this game? Is this game set outdoors in a city how many doors can you see? Now, consider that on the other side of the door must now exist a room, for example a 20 floor building must have 20 individually created floors, devided into maybe 30 apartments for a residentual building or say 4 for a commercial building which are each going to need some their own assets or they are going to look the same. Lets say optimistically 200 man hours per floor to get it to fairly rough quality (skip concept art and iteration, re-use most assets), 20 floors per building, that's 4,000 man hours per building which at $30 an hour (average for 3d artists in US) is $120,000. One building, done poorly with absolutely nothing interesting inside.

So what do you want to do? Have a game with no buildings? But buildings work well in games and players play well in cities! Have no doors in buildings? But that would look strange! Have a game where all the buildings are the same inside? But that would defeat the purpose of having them, since players would have no reason to enter them!

One of the key thing about making a better game, nomatter from design, art, engineering is not adding more but working out clever ways of not doing things. Time and money are finite, GTA 5 cost $135 million to make, the vast majority of which was spent adding detail to the world, but most buildings are still empty shells. The key is to cue players to not notice what you don't have.

The problem you have with Tomb Raider is not a detail problem but a communication problem. From a design problem they have failed to communicate to you what can be grabbed and what cannot. Sure, they could have gone the Assassin's Creed route and procedually made everything grabbable, but Assassin's Creed's climbing wasn't much fun at all for that very reason, there was no searching and pondering aspect, you just push him in the general direction and he climbs. So it leaves you with the problem of making an attractive environment with a finite amount of interaction and they handled it, imperfectly, but as best they could.

The thing is, when making a game, adding more is not always possible. Skill in design means making the same amount seem like more.

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