Off-Topic:

[Solo761]

Well, I need to raise my postcount .

But, not really, most technological advances were actually evolution of "old" technology. Not exactly a revolutions.

Like computers. What we have now is not something revolutionary when compared to those 20, even 30 years ago. It's just evolution of old designs. They reduced size of transistors, increased frequency and now, when we're nearing frequency limit comes new evolution thing, more CPU cores on the same die. But there's also limit to that. Currently there are problems when there's more than about 16 cores. Performance actually starts to drop. Too much time is spent to divide work between the cores so they spend more time waiting for work then actually doing it.

Now we're starting to hear about quantum computing. They're starting to see that current technology can't be milked forever so they're starting to look for new money cow. Why invest in something new if there's money in what we have? That doesn't create profit...

If it would have been less about profit and more about progress maybe Space Odyssey 2001 wouldn't have been that far off.

In case of computers this is not such a big deal (few years more until the rise of terminators ), but some other things could have far grimmer consequences, like pollution from need (greed) for power and our dependency on fossil fuels.


P.S.

I consider '70.-'80. the time corporations "came to power".

[delta224]

The main issue is that technological progress is a slow process.  30-40 years is a short time span in tech progress.  It took how long to develop steel cheaply.  The main driving force for tech progress is the state of science, how can I do x faster/more accuratly/better/cheaper/safer and the brilliant mind that can figure it all out.

[zodiac44]

See, now *that*, to me, is a very hard position to defend.  I don't have the time ATM to name specifics, but perhaps someone else will until I can get around to it? 

Are you referring to the argument that electric cars don't help with pollution?  I have argued the point before that they may or may not reduce pollution, depending on a number of factors:

• Most power comes from polluting fossil fuels, so the generation of electricity to power the cars will increase the pollution generated by power plants.
• Compare energy efficiencies: if Ec > Ep * Et * Es * Ed, where:
  
  • Ec = efficiency of combustion engine
  • Ep = efficiency of power plants
  • Et = efficiency power transmission network
  • Es = efficiency of battery storage
  • Ed = efficiency of electric engine
  then internal combustion engines are more energy efficient than electric cars, if not then electric cars are more energy efficient.
• Compare pollution efficiency: if Pc * Ec > Pp * Ee, where:
   
  • Pc = pollution per unit of fuel in a combustion engine
  • Pp = pollution per unit of fuel in a power plant
  • Ee = energy efficiency of electric cars (right-hand side of the previous equation)
  then electric cars contribute less pollution in operation than cars powered by internal combustion engines.

The answers to these equations will change based on the power plant chosen, fuel types, car model, geographic region, etc, so calculating which is more efficient is a nightmare.  If we could get our hands on some reliable data on the average values for the variables, then we could make a general statement about relative efficiency and pollution reduction.

Electric cars face a huge obstacle in deployment, though, which goes beyond any cost, efficiency, and pollution disadvantages which may or may not exist.  The power infrastructure of the United States is in deplorable condition; any significant increase in power draw in the short- to medium-term (before the system can be overhauled, presuming someone is willing to pay to do it) will overload the capacity of the network, causing brownouts and possibly damaging the infrastructure itself.

Zodiac what numbers, because I don't believe that 50% of the increaseis due to medicare.  Our over use of medical services, paper work,lakeof preventive care and such.  As for everything else I do agree prettymuch, except for the comment on the space program.  They are makinggains, just nothing that the public sees as gains.  Lets put it thisway modern communications would not be possible without the spaceprogram and putting all those comm satellites into orbit, and makingsure that they can work for a long time. 

Once I figure out how zodiac or whoever came up with the 50% it will let it go.

I don't recall the source off the top of my head; it was one of several nuggets I culled from peer-reviewed economic journals while writing a thesis on the efficacy of government intervention in the economy.  The supporting argument was based on fixed payments to health care providers who accepted Medicare/Medicaid (which was often a condition of receiving research grants and other desirable funding from the Federal government) for services which cost the providers more than the fees they received.  The overages were then passed on to the private sector by increasing pricing to insurance companies and the uninsured.  This caused insurance rates to rise in turn.  Inflation in the medical industry outpaced the rate at which Medicare payments increased (which, IIRC, were tied to a more general inflation index), resulting in the overages increasing at a rate which exceeded the inflation rate of the industry as a whole, which meant inflation of insurance costs also outpaced inflation in the medical industry, and in turn the general inflation rate.

Don't quote me on that, though, as I am working strictly from memory here and may very well have some of the details wrong.  One rather staggering piece of information comes from the Congressional Budget Office, which estimated the cost of Medicare/Medicaid for the baby boomer generation would be approximately $57 Trillion.  As a point of reference, the capital assets of the United States (our productive facilities, factories, businesses, houses, etc) were valued at about $40 Trillion (at the time the estimate was made - circa 2007, as I recall).  We couldn't mortgage the whole country to pay that bill.  Thankfully, our intellectual capital and labor assets are valued considerably higher, so we still have the option of selling our citizens as slaves to other countries taxing the fuck out of everyone, at punitive rates, to pay for it.  Now some people want the government to involve itself even more in health care?  That's just plain nuts.

[Solo761]

The main issue is that technological progress is a slow process.  30-40 years is a short time span in tech progress.  It took how long to develop steel cheaply.  The main driving force for tech progress is the state of science, how can I do x faster/more accuratly/better/cheaper/safer and the brilliant mind that can figure it all out.

You mean Dexter's Laboratory isn't a documentary? Well, I never...

I don't kinda consider technological progress like a linear thing. Advancing one field can help some other field to make a breakthrough. And just look at first 50-60 years of 20th century. A lot of stuff we have now has been invented in that period. Since then it's mostly leeching on those inventions.

My point was, if there weren't for corporations whose primary purpose in existence is to gather money we would probably be better off.

[DocClox]

Changing the subject completely, can I just say that DRAGON AGE SUCKS big time? I've just fought through to final boss fight, before giving up in disgust. Every chance they get (and I'm talking secons here) my mages switch to melee weapons and try and tank the dragon. I've checked the tactics slots and there is no "impersonate Conan the Barbarian" option there to remove, so I can only assume it's either a bug, or just plain bad design.

Furthermore:

• When I click on a character to give them orders, very often the click is ignored.
• When I do give succeed in getting their attention, orders are sometimes ignored anyway.
• The inventory system is a source of constant frustration. It fills up quickly, it takes a lot of time to get back to a shop, and you wind up having to destroy perfectly good items to make room for better ones.
• You can't drop anything. There are chests and containers, but you can't put stuff in, only take it out.
• The relentless "buy this add-on to make the game playable" nagging. There's a pillock standing in the camp with a big "!" over his head who basically says "pay for the DLC and I'll tell you about a quest". To add insult to injury, the quest in question is the one that gives you a party storage area.
• The game works hard to set up fights that you need to think tactically in order to win, and then for boss fights it pulls in your whole party and drops them in front of the bad guy in the stupidest formation possible.
• Sometime it won't let you hurt the bad guys until they've seen you.
• Enemies can often shoot you through the corner of walls, but you can't cast a fireball over a low balcony railing
• ... And if you try your mage will run through ranks of enemy grunts until he's nose-to-node with Ye Olde Damage Machine before fireballing his own feet.
• On the overland map you have a camp that you can only access at the end of a journey
• And the journeys themselves are like hyperspace jumps. Once you start, you're locked in and have to go there, even if the journey is interrupted halfway.
• On the tactical scale the areas are tiny and filled with artificial barriers to make walking around seem more challenging. (I know it's  standard practice for such these games, but DA:O takes it beyond the point of sanity. In the city there's a puddle that you can't walk through, ffs! You have to go around.
• Too many cutscenes and too much talky-talky. Often mumbled and subtitles are off by default.

I swear, there never was a game that annoyed me this much that I played for this long. The Witcher came close (for many of the same reasons) but then the Witcher was fun, which never quite happened in DA:O. I've played Balder's Gate, I've played Neverwinter Nights, I played Mass Effect. None of them infuriated me one tenth as much as this turkey.

Sorry. I just needed to rant a bit.

[delta224]

Never played dragon age and probably never will.  The over abundance of dlc pisses me off.

[Solo761]

I've tried DA and I was not impressed. I played it only for a few hours, beginning and until you cross the bridge after The Big Battle (TM).

To me the game was completely cliche. First time you see a character you know what he'll turn out to be, well, maybe not every time, but two of them that looked like weasels to me turned out to be weasels. Plus generic story and the fact your head is wanted from the start made me do alt+f4 and uninstall. I would prefer some freedom (or at least illusion of freedom), like in Baldur's Gate. In short, DA looks forced to me.

Although I never finished Baldur's Gate, I still have saves, but problem is that I would stray away on some my quests and ignore main plot line. So I get bored of it and leave it. Then year-two later I continue where I stopped . But at least I finished Icewind Dale and ID: Heart of Winter .

I also tried NWN long time ago, but it was somewhat like DA is to me today, more of the same. Mass Effect was fun to me. More or less good mix of RPG and action, and what's best, it's not in medieval setting, but space (finaly!!). In next few days ME2 will come out, although I'm not sure if it'll be out on both PC na XBox360, or just X360 with PC version following in next few months.

DLCs are bugging me too. Why do they expect me to pay for the game, and then next day again pay for some additional stuff to make my game complete...

I usually play MMOs, mostly World of Warcraft. It's not the best and it has it's share of issues, but at least it has open world and it's minimally instanced. I hoped to switch to Star Trek Online, but after I tried beta I'm not so sure. The game is too monotonous. Sure every MMO comes down to basic stuff, go there, kill them, come back. But in WoW at least scenery changes, in STO surroundings are also monotonous (well, it is space...). But the the thing that irks me the most is that it's 95% of the time fighting. I expected more from something with Star Trek in its name, more of exploration. With things as they are ATM I fired more photon torpedoes and phasors from lvl1 to lvl2 then they fired in whole season of The Next Generation . Here's what I recorded few days ago, this is science class vessel. Funny thing, but it can stand the most fire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niT0vVOGn6g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuxVaNrw47A


Beside MMOs, two other games I played recently were Borderlands, it's kinda first person shooter Diablo, pretty fun, too bad multiplayer is made in substandard way on PC and Fallout 3. Fallout 3 has same problem like Baldur's Gate, I overturned every rock on the map exploring and doing side quests except the main one , which I still haven't done . And there are some fun mods for it, try searching for animated prostitution mod and playthings mod .


Ouch, this turned out to be wall of text.

[sgb]

haha, did you know they're releasing a full expansion for DA already?  Not even six months after it hit the shelves they're asking people to pony up more cash without even having fixed some serious technical issues and bugs.  I agree the whole thing was just disappointing.  I've played through Baldur's Gate 2 about 6-7 times now.  The only time it has left my computer's drive is when I built a new system.  After finishing DA once, I'm just about ready to uninstall it.  There just isn't any compelling reason to play through it again.  The story is meh, the only likable characters are Allistar and Sten (all of the party banter involving him is awesome), and the combat quickly becomes a joke once you get certain mage spells.

And I agree the in-game DLC salesman is the most obnoxious thing I've seen in a game so far.  What happened to you Bioware?  You used to be cool.  Oh, right; you sold your souls to EA.  I think I'll pass on Mass Effect 2 if this is what the current Bioware team considers to be as good as Baldur's Gate was.

Fallout 3 has same problem like Baldur's Gate, I overturned every rockon the map exploring and doing side quests except the main one

Now, I don't really see that as a 'problem'.  That's the way a cRPG is supposed to be.  You don't have to do the main quest until you're damn well good and ready.  You're supposed to have the freedom to tell the BBEG to fuck off - there could be more loot in that strange building and you're not going anywhere until you've checked it out.

[delta224]

Recently I've been spending way too much time play rouge-likes.

[sgb]

Roguelikes are fantastic games to play at work home.  They can be played for short play sessions, and games don't last that long as it's only a matter of time before the game decides it's time to screw you over.

Heard about Star Trek online sucking.  It's too bad really, but I didn't have high hopes when I heard Cryptic was involved.

[delta224]

I have yet to beat one with out resorting to wizard mode that was not made for the ds.

[letmein]

You mean Dexter's Laboratory isn't a documentary? Well, I never...

I don't kinda consider technological progress like a linear thing. Advancing one field can help some other field to make a breakthrough. And just look at first 50-60 years of 20th century. A lot of stuff we have now has been invented in that period. Since then it's mostly leeching on those inventions.

My point was, if there weren't for corporations whose primary purpose in existence is to gather money we would probably be better off.

Alright... back to srgue discuss the issue!

First off, you're completely ignoring software in your base claim.  Most notably, the Internet - and all the neat innovations that have come with it.  Wikipedia,  Google Earth, browser searching, file sharing...  and on and on.

Aside from that, I generally agree that there have been very few revolutionary inventions in the last, oh, 25 years or so.  However, there are some caveats there.  You have to determine what you mean by a, as you termed it, "breakthrough".  If you replace the old-style Walkmans with an iPod Touch, have you made a breakthrough?  Most people would say no, BUT if you had made that change over the space of three months instead of three decades, what would you say then?  Constant innovation can, in the long run, serve the same purpose as sudden invention.

I also have to object to your arbitrary time for the "rise of corporations".  Take a look at the Gilded Age, and tell me that corporations weren't more influential then than now.



I'm excited about ME2.  Sad, that Bioware seems to have dropped the ball on DA - but I'm not too concerned for the next Mass Effect, since it's substantially the same team of people as ME1.

[Alugere]

Changing the subject completely, can I just say that DRAGON AGE SUCKS big time? I've just fought through to final boss fight, before giving up in disgust. Every chance they get (and I'm talking secons here) my mages switch to melee weapons and try and tank the dragon. I've checked the tactics slots and there is no "impersonate Conan the Barbarian" option there to remove, so I can only assume it's either a bug, or just plain bad design. Unless you're constantly having your mage sit beside the enemy and then run out of mana, I don't see why they would change from their staff to melee damage. I never had this problem.

Furthermore:

• When I click on a character to give them orders, very often the click is ignored. Try pausing before you switch between characters or click on their portrait
• When I do give succeed in getting their attention, orders are sometimes ignored anyway. You can change the character's default actions fairly easily in the tactics area
• The inventory system is a source of constant frustration. It fills up quickly, it takes a lot of time to get back to a shop, and you wind up having to destroy perfectly good items to make room for better ones. Buy more backpacks every time you see one and then sell stuff every time you get a chance to do so, I rarely ran out of rooms
• You can't drop anything. There are chests and containers, but you can't put stuff in, only take it out.
• The relentless "buy this add-on to make the game playable" nagging. There's a pillock standing in the camp with a big "!" over his head who basically says "pay for the DLC and I'll tell you about a quest". To add insult to injury, the quest in question is the one that gives you a party storage area. Can't say much about that, I got the special eddition that came with the current dlc.
• The game works hard to set up fights that you need to think tactically in order to win, and then for boss fights it pulls in your whole party and drops them in front of the bad guy in the stupidest formation possible. If you don't plan on playing tactically, play on easy. If you read the description of the difficulties, easy is intended for those who don't plan on playing tactically.
• Sometime it won't let you hurt the bad guys until they've seen you. Generally, this is because some bad guys have a speaking line before you fight them, even if it is only minor. In many instances, this is because they might of a speaking line depending on the circumstances and it wants to check first before allowing you to attack them.
• Enemies can often shoot you through the corner of walls, but you can't cast a fireball over a low balcony railingYou need a line of sight to launch spells like that, and railings block that. Also, railings will block, on average, 50% of all arrows fired at them.
  
• ... And if you try your mage will run through ranks of enemy grunts until he's nose-to-node with Ye Olde Damage Machine before fireballing his own feet. You told the mage to find a line of sight to send out the spell, this is your fault.
  
• On the overland map you have a camp that you can only access at the end of a journey You can access the camp at any time you can choose the destination. Given that you only have one encounter per trip between locations that don't include your camp, and complaining about when you can access your camp is rather silly. Essentially, you can access your camp before you start traveling, and after, with only one event in between. It would be odd to go to your camp in the middle of an event.
• And the journeys themselves are like hyperspace jumps. Once you start, you're locked in and have to go there, even if the journey is interrupted halfway. The journey is always interrupted half way. That's the gimmick for traveling. You get one random encounter. Besides, why would you want to turn back just because you had one random encounter?
• On the tactical scale the areas are tiny and filled with artificial barriers to make walking around seem more challenging. (I know it's  standard practice for such these games, but DA:O takes it beyond the point of sanity. In the city there's a puddle that you can't walk through, ffs! You have to go around. I have played through the game many times, and I prefer playing in the tactical scale, it's much easier. If you don't play in the tactical scale, that might be why you keep missing characters with your clicks.
• Too many cutscenes and too much talky-talky. Often mumbled and subtitles are off by default. I never had problems hearing the characters, although I have turned on subtitles. Plus, if you've ever played a game by this company, you should know they do this much talking. That's how rpg's work.

I swear, there never was a game that annoyed me this much that I played for this long. The Witcher came close (for many of the same reasons) but then the Witcher was fun, which never quite happened in DA:O. I've played Balder's Gate, I've played Neverwinter Nights, I played Mass Effect. None of them infuriated me one tenth as much as this turkey.

Sorry. I just needed to rant a bit.

Comments in blue. Frankly, I loved Dragon Age.

[Mehzerz]

I didn't like DA either. I liked their other games a lot more. KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect. I've been hooked on Demon's Souls lately. That game is too fun.


Mass Effect 2 is coming in a few days, not to mention White Knight Chronicles, and Star Ocean 4 (for those of us who haven't played the 360 version) For us PS3 gamers.

[letmein]

KOTOR was phenominal.  Sad, that KOTORII wasn't finished properly...  but I'm more disappointed that KOTORIII (or whatever it's called) is going to be a MMO.  I hate MMO's.