demagogue

I watched it without sound on this computer. ... which reminds me, did that guard look up because he heard a sound of someone coming? (I couldn't hear.) But then it looks absurd that he'd look *up* since he's on the top floor. (edited by Gildoran to condense the posts as per your request)

I actually don't have anything against gun ownership per se. While it wouldn't kill me to see guns heavily restricted, I also enjoy going out to the country to go skeet shooting or hunting. I can see how a lot of gun owners would feel indignant that they'd have to give up their guns just because a few innercity/drug user types (the statistics) can't control themselves owning them. "Why should we be punished for their criminal tendancies?" they might think ... even if it's true a gun ban might well make a noticable difference in the impact of their criminal tendencies. But like before I think it doesn't quite get to a source of the problem, which is much more economic oriented. So that's why the gun-control debate doesn't move me much one way or another; I don't have a strong opinion about it ... I could be fine with either way, but I don't think it's any real solution. One idea I heard that sounds really stupid at first but actually starts sounding good when you start thinking about it is that gun manufactuers should be liable to a tort suit for the criminal mishandling of their weapons that results in harm. That is, the person injured (or the family of deceased) could sue the manufacturer of the gun that hurt them in a criminal context to pay damages. The reason is because it's a market failure when guns, which can serve valid purposes outside the criminal context, are put in contexts where they serve invalid purposes, like crime ... and like most market failures, the manufactuer (the one that profits from it) is in the best position to make sure their product is marketed or constructed in a way that best avoids the failure. But it won't happen unless the "harm" from the market failure is internalized into their profit margins (this is true of any externality). So like corporations can be sued for foreseeable environmental damage from pumping out toxins, gun manufacturers could be sued for foreseeable criminal uses of their product (since crime is one very foreseeable possibility of gun ownership, so they can't well argue that it wasn't their choice). The advantage is, they'll now have an economic incentive to come up with ways to keep guns in the right hands; the market is always better at handling these sorts of things than the State anyway. What do other people think? (The idea comes from my tort law professor, who developed a legal theory on this idea.)

Yes. Violent crime is an abberrition in Japan, almost inconceivable; but just as unknown is a significant immigrant/outsider population competing with the natives for a sizable chunk of the economy. As for the "the price to pay for doing the right thing", I didn't word it correctly since it's misleading from my thinking and I didn't mean it as Orb understood it (since I would agree with what he said), and I meant it as Darkness-Falls said. Also, in my mind I was sort of thinking of the Civil Rights movement to integrate African Americans into white schools and employment sectors, which was undoutably the morally right thing to do, but similar to the problems Europe is having with absorbing immigrant populations into its economy -- except on a much wider scale -- when you intergrate a "non-accultured" population into an economy, people fall through the cracks and you get persistent un/under-employment that (the important part) creates a culture around itself that may be more susceptible to criminality. Before the 1960s, a lot of African American neighborhoods were sort of little bubble economies that couldn't be sustainable ... and even aside from the Civil Rights movement, it is the nature of economic systems, and globalization only accelerates it, to pop these sorts of bubbles and pressure the economy to be more fluid. I mean, 1940s-50s US was a much safer era, but I don't think anyone aside from a few right-wing kooks is suggesting we try to recreate the economic/demographic conditions of basically bottling black neighborhoods back up and putting them back into the country, even if we could. My point was, it's these sorts of pressures that are actually driving unemployment; also the urbanzation of African Americans as a demographic-event probably plays in here as well; all adding up to a culture that builds around it that sustains the "bad" conditions it in certain neighborhoods. I mean, I think it is this kind of "culture" that's really at the root; since criminality is so not-in-a-person's-interest that it only really makes sense as a community-bound sub-culture that develops given the appropriate conditions, not one that parents actually encourage to their kids, but one that probably develops in the margins, something at first tolerated that reaches a critical mass. Anyway, you can blame the gov't for not responding to it appropriately, but it's not like the gov't is *intending* for there to be large, persistent unemployment among black youths in urban neighborhoods that develop a culture for being "bad". And the point about "globalization" as a catalyst is that a lot of the driving problem is something a national gov't can't control no matter what it does. It's no longer possible for the Federal Reserve just raise the interest rate as a national monetary policy; inflation is occuring in the US (and world) because of higher oil prices, making jobs more conservative and more African Americans in the US and Muslim-immigrants in European cities out on the street getting frustrated in "bad" neighborhoods. So there's a question if it's true that Toronto has a similar racial demographic to Detroit, why there is more violence in the latter. Part of the story I'm sure is the American economy is more fluid, including illicit trade like drugs, and there's less of a social net to catch unemployment. Another part may be that African American communities in Detroit are much older, so there's more of a "culture of resignation" (not my argument), as well as more "bad" neighborhoods, whereas such communtiies in Toronto are sort of self-selected "movers and shakers" better able to respond to economic uncertainty and living in "good" neighborhoods. My main problem with Moore's treatment was *not* that he wasn't putting his finger on a real problem; he was. I just thought he wasn't really asking the right questions to get what the problem really was, nor did he seem really anxious to. It seemed like more of a stump to make a political point (liberal Democratic values are the right ones; get guns off the street, stop a "culture of fear" (of blacks? of every perceived threat? I'm still not really sure how he links a "culture of fear" with any actual incidents of shooting a gun), and create more of a social net for blacks), which comes across more as straight-up ideology; not that all of those things wouldn't be useful stuff to do, I'm sure they would. But what seems to me *more* helpful is to tell a technical story in terms of demographics and socio-economic forces, and solutions should be on the technical, system side as well ... whereas many of Moore's "solutions" seem to be more superficial, not really getting at the root problem with integrating "non-acculturated" populations into a fluid, globalized economy, and what's driving a "culture of criminality" in them. In that vein, some of his explanation irked me. For example, when he gave the statistics between Canada and US murder rates, he gave raw numbers, when it is just so much more helpful to put it as a percent per-capita, since of course the US has a much larger population, and the raw numbers are misleading. He also didn't break up the numbers by demographic, regional, or socio-economic factors (I don't remember anyway); and and freaking MOST IMPORTANT, by type of gun killings -- accidental, drug related, theft, hate crime, mental defect/sociopathy, domestic abuse, etc. (How can you have any idea what the numbers means without at least this?) These two things would be the *first* sort of stuff I'd want done with the numbers to have any idea about what the problem is, otherwise the numbers don't tell me much of anything, nothing useful anyway. If 80% of the killings in the US are drug related, well, maybe the difference is in drug policy between the US and Canada. That kind of slack attitude to statistics is sort of thematic of what irked me about it. Also, why wasn't he interviewing actual murderers, or those in their demographic situation? Their psychology and incentives are what's at issue here and should be at the *center* of analysis. Why aren't we visiting bad neighborhoods and seeing first hand what's angering violent people, what's encouraging criminality, etc. For fuck's sake his centerpiece was the Columbine shootings which statistically are very aberrational (sociopathy). His main contribution was just getting people to think about the issue, I think.

I sometimes think about getting either an old British Triumph (to be unique and retro-cool) or a big Kawasaki (because I lived in Japan and like to stay connected to it) ... 2 very different bikes, I know, but just what I was thinking. I get worried because one of my best friends died in a motorcycle accident about 5 years ago, and it's always struck me as gratuitously risky just to drive around town ... but there's no denying it's a real thrill to be on a bike and feel right on top of the road. The turning you described does sound unintuitive, but it's easy to imagine once you think about it and "feel" the physics of it. Sounds fun, actually.

Haha ... one of the best parts is the announcer's megaphoned voice: ARE YOU READY TO RUUUUUMMMMMBBBBLLLEEEEEEEEE?!!!!! and everybody cheers. Like professional wrestling, it's all sort of an act and if you go you may as well play along.

I find his documentaries are good for entertainment value, but the analysis (if you can call it that) is always piss poor and nothing I can really take seriously. I don't see how our media is any more "fear mongering" than other countries I've lived in, but anyway it doesn't really make sense as an explanation since mass media is by definition consumed on a mass level, whereas the violence level is of course very localized, even in the range of different city streets or neighborhoods. I tend to think that there are more basic socio-economic and demographic reasons which explain violence rates. I mean, I live in NYC, and a bad neighborhood just feels bad. Lots of unemployed young men with nothing to do but hang out on the street and get frustrated ... then you add drug pushers on the street corners and that's fuel to the fire, since it provides a reason to need money, and just creates a culture or atmosphere of criminality/violence. At the same time, about a decade ago the murder rate in NYC plummeted very sharply down, and sociologists attributed it to demographic shifts where the main perpetrators just literally grew up, got jobs and families and couldn't afford to be so adventerous, coinciding with economic conditions having to do with the 90s bubble pushing a lot of capital around that trickled down; jobs were just willing to take bigger risks in hiring. Also, one thing he doesn't emphasize is the fact that most developed States with less violence, because people just trust each other more or whatever, are because their population is just more homogenous. At least for me, this is certainly why Japan and Scandanavian countries (maybe more so 10 years ago) felt very safe to me even in the most inner of cities. It's sort of the price America pays for doing the right thing and integrating (and pushing racial diversity as a virtue, which doesn't even make sense, e.g., in Japan), but then the US has a dilemma in making sure the income gap doesn't spiral out where minorities aren't getting work and have an incentive to be distrustful. As I see it, doing the right thing helps foster the problem, so it's something of a Catch-22 that takes patient work to resolve with no silver bullets ... and Moore seems to miss that point. It sort of reminds me of the violence around Paris last year, just integrate that kind of frustration across every major city, and the US doesn't seem so unique anymore in essence, but only in degree. As for Moore, like a lot of people not actually doing politics but talking about it, I think he doesn't like the idea that much of the problem is out of a government's control, so throws out superficial possibilities as if it's worth thinking about them just so we don't feel so impotent.

Showing it to my friend, I noticed a few more things: 1. I wonder, in the opening scene, if all of that is brushworked city, or is some of that a creative skybox. In any event, it's such a large looking area, like a real city. I hope it'll be possible to put vistas like that in-game since it's impressive. 2. it seems we've got AI hammer-bashing the PC now. For some reason, I thought that was still a ways off. 3. anybody notice the black moon?

Fun to watch! I was going to first critique the fact that many of the buildings look so similar in style, but after a while it sort of starts looking cool, like a really anonymous city that almost abstracts itself. This is the first time we've, at least I've seen AI expressions featured -- or at least what appear to be expressions (glances, etc). Anyway, cool video.

Haha! It's even more useless than I thought!

I can't turn the sound on this computer, so I'm going to guess there's more to this than a bumping "?". I'm also going to guess that even if I could hear it I wouldn't be very impressed. In related news, though, NYCity in general (and my apartment in particular) is apparently going through a bug epidemic right now; we could probably use a few spiders to clean the place up.

Well, to give this topic a boost in the helpful direction, can anyone summarize how Unreal 2007 is going to be any different in essence than any other past incarnation (putting aside the graphics, etc)?

Yes, I like the city street in particular, too. It's exciting to think that these are just showing what's possible, and that things can only look better from here.

I think it would be much better to be more liberal with the Beta-Mapping position as it gets closer to release. Public-betas are bad ideas, esp with something like this, because people will treat the release as if it's a finished product (warning or not), and it just isn't finished, and shouldn't get any notion of being "public" until all the core stuff is in, IMHO. But I think, as I just said, it may be a good idea near release time to start letting even newbie mappers try out the system as a beta-mapper, (esp if they have a nice full Komag tut to guide them by then ) just to see if there are any issues from their perspective.

I know you guys have probably already talked about it, but what it sounds like is that the easiest stuff to postpone are the non-essential, labor-intensive, discrete stuff like specific AI, textures, objects, ambients that are relatively easy to add to the package piecemeal ... and it's the core mechanics, and some core AI, textures, and objects that will come out in release 1.0. Well, it sounds like a reasonable plan, like out-sourcing labor-intensive stuff to the community post-release. I'd also think you really want to get the core mechanics down as tightly as possible before the first release. Anyway, I don't think I'm making any new revelation, but just thinking aloud for the sake of the public forum.

Awesome. This is a nice surprise ... had me laughing. I couldn't understand the words, but most of it was intuitive... "Oh, just a panda." The messed up pathfinding was funny. And I got a good laugh out of the point-blank arrow hit, too. Who made this, by the way? Seems like it'd be someone in the community.

Yeah, it is looking better each round. It's cool if you find a good balance between inspiration and artistic freedom, because that will make it fun to go through, at once familiar but still some surprises ... and maybe change up the objectives a little to make it feel fresh. There's a video somewhere of someone's interpretation of the bow upgrade. They built an alarus extension in dromed and a platform to get to it. Then the video is in-game, he jumps into the A.E., grabs the bow upgrade, which draws the bow now labeled "bow (upgraded)", and it turns the bow into something like firing RPG-arrows, and then he goes running around blowing zombies to hell with huge explosions. Pretty awesome! If you can find it, watch it ... *that* would be a cool thing to try to pull off.

Desk? That's how I read this. It (sort of) rhymes, anyway.

From someone who has studied both German and Japanese, German is of course faster/easier to learn, since English is in part a Germanic language after all, it picks up fast. Japanese is fun just because the kanji ramp it up to a whole new level, like really learning an alien language. There may be changes in the grammer based on social hierarchy, but you really don't have to learn any of that to be conversational and it shouldn't be a deterrent. E.g., you most often omit the word "I" and "you" altogether, so it doesn't matter which word you use. And it has a grammatical structure, just one that doesn't map well onto Western languages. They actually have interesting similarities (compared to English): the pronunciation virtually always follows directly from the spelling, and the grammer follows pretty regular rules with few exceptions; both have troves of neologisms (I think is the term), the ability to cram smaller words together to make up new words, and you can apparently just keep stacking them up. Also, in both languages you very often have to wait until the damn end of the sentence to hear the verb to have any idea what's going on!

It sounds gamey to me, as well, about on par with racing games with the cars in front of you that slow down so you can catch up, and burst with speed when they are left behind to be suddenly on your tail. There is a distinct line between actual "game" and an interactive movie that's just playing out for your entertainment. I have less of a problem with AI appearing to "learn" things from the PC's actions (patterns of behavior), though, if it isn't gamey like this, but even here I stand with thinking it's best done ad hoc by the builder, with scripting or whatnot, rather than wasting the team's time making it a default attribute.

Babelfish is telling me "fröhlich und schadenfroh" = "merrily and harm-gladly". I understand how gleeful = "merrily" ... but I'm not sure how gleeful = "harm-gladly". Sounds like a very bad translation (on Babelfish's part) that's confused me.

Who are you on TTLG? The story of my nick is actually there somewhere if you want to look it up (when it's back up). But long story short, it's from a spoof website I put up when I first learned HTML (still in the wee early days of the net) for recruiting minions to do my evil bidding, me being the benevolent demagogue of course. I made a lot of those spoof kinds of pages in those days, most sort of on the dark side, just to practice making sites and as a creative outlet (since I made them to look good) ... a LBJ/Nixon fanpage, one celebrating medieval Arab invaders and torture methods, some sites for philosophers I liked, etc.

I just noticed in the last map I made that AI in the original Thief can randomize the next patrol way-point they'll go to, which in effect randomizes them backtracking sometimes and not others. I think simple things like this (easy for the builder to design and control) are really the way to go, and not something too complicated to predict and control, since it will largely be up to a builder how random behavior will effect gameplay in the context of his map. Another thing, it seems a lot of the stuff you mention re: in game "learning" could be taken care of with scripting.

For the record, this debate reminds me of the debate in behavioral economics that "intellegent" actors, at least when they're doing strategic behavior, are self-consciously a little random (predictably random!) just so their competitor can't predict exactly what they'll do, while they can still be optimal at the same time. This is one reason why Pavlov was wrong (all actions aren't s/r reflexes, arguably none) and why building some of this into video game AI makes for good gaming. A slightly different debate here is on rule following and generativity (being "original"), which works for some types of rules like chess and language. Too much to explain here, though.

It'd be nice as an option for the toughest difficulty, better for replayability ... but I doubt devs are going to line up to implement something like this, with the heavy load of work, if it's not going to be used much. By the way, my undergrad cogsci/AI professor (Risto Miikkulainen) at U Texas has been involved in this sort of project for years now, engineering this sort of stuff, or one version of it, for video games and the military, the NEAT project (Neuro-Evolution of Augmenting Topologies). E.g., they have a demo game out called NERO (Neuro Evolving Robotic Operatives), which plays with putting NEAT into real time... you have to defeat little invading robot armies, RTS style, that get progressively smarter and learn from your defenses with each advance, and also a project for FPSs, right now apparently focusing on goal-directed navigation and, very cool I think, a platform for a uniform interface to a library of computer game environments.

Well, to be fair, most genres have a problem with mindless shooting fests and could use a little more imagination. Also, it's not always clear what "strategic" means in the FPS context (so when you see the word, it's maybe forgiveable to misunderstand what's going on). Deus Ex claimed to allow players "strategic" choices in going through a scene, but I got the feeling by this they meant there was some flexibility between which weapon you'd rely on, big and loud or small and silent, or sometimes you could find a back way in or sneak through, or some areas had some "puzzle" to them to cross, etc, but IMO these really aren't so much "strategic" decisions as the word is used in most other game contexts like RTS, planning ahead and countering AI/other player strategies, and really making hard, on-the-fly cost/benefit sorts of decisions. This is another way that the potential in FPSs has barely been scratched, I think (mostly because of lackluster AI and again a failure of imagination).