metadigital

See, I think I located the problem If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a chance for you to read up on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte "megabyte MB 10^6 (or 2^20) mebibyte MiB 2^20" So you see, what you take for granted ("1 MB = 1,048,576 Bytes") is not that certain. It might as well be 1,000,000.. Just as Mb and MB can mean different things! For the most part it's easily deciphered from context, which is why it's a stupid pet peeve to have. ""Byte" is most often abbreviated as "B", hence "MB for "megabyte". Sometimes "b" is used for byte (and "bit" for bit), but this can cause confusion because of the much more common use of "b" to mean bit. French-speaking countries sometimes use "o" for "octet". This is also unacceptable in SI because of the risk of confusion with the zero." If you're really interested in this mess, read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix All I'm saying is that you have a pet peeve about something that's not "precise". It's kind of like being annoyed when people spell humour "humor" even though both are right. Pointless. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No, it is not comparable with spelling. Now you are being disingenuous to cover up your error (or arrogance). To use your own analogy, it is like you just decided to spell humour "hewma". It is a peeve because it requires me, the reader, to do the work of you, the author, which you can easily do much quicker and more efficiently (as it is your thoughts you are writing), and indeed it may even be impossible for me to decipher your garbled message. I have never needed to use MiB, because it is always clear (based on the SI units) what is being represented. Except when people don't use standard abbreviations and use non-standard ones. Like you just did. I wouldn't mind as much, as I said in my post, if you used "mb" for MegaByte (although I would still regard you as illiterate and / or lazy), but using "Mb" for MegaByte is almost perposely trying to dis-inform. It does not do you justice.

Neat. ... As for people like me who didn't like Morrowind as much, there are promising signs. Many of the things I complained about are getting attention, such as the character art, animation, combat, AI, and physics. I didn't have any confidence that any of these would be fixed, so I was pleasantly surprised to see these very issues being discussed in press releases and interviews. I heard that Mike Lipari was working on the AI, and he's the second best programmer I've ever met, so I have high expectations. ... And I liked this terse explanation as to why the fanboys' endless whining about "official Revan" name / gender / background / lifestyle / alignment / brand of toothpaste / etcetra: ... Sinder Velvin: Will we ever find out the names of the Eternal Champion, the Hero of Daggerfall, the Hero of the Battlespire or the Nerevarine? Douglas Goodall: As far as I know, they will always be nameless. This is a needlessly complicated way to avoid "playing favorites" and cheapening the player's experiences. For all I know, it wasn't my Breton Sorcerer or Khajiti Assassin that re-assembled the Staff of Chaos and defeated Jagar Tharn, but your... Well... Whatever you played. ...

Yep, different strokes. :D Well, they might have said that they had employed a team of writers including all the staff of Friends (not because they are especially good, but they are legion in number and know how to put together episodic scripts with multiple plot threads and even !gasp! humour), overseen by Woody Allen and Bob Dylan developing characters and Arthur C Clark editing the plot and Stephen Hawkin as special physics consultant and Sir Patrick Moore as astronomy consultant and James Gleick with Niklaus Wirth assisting in code design. :cool: Speech is a nice-to-have. Plot and story are essential.

Buy a PC. Here are the current Best of Breed components (and why you can build a better Pc than any console): [*]the best graphics card is the Gigabyte nVidia 7800 GTX SLI (= two nVidia 6800 Ultra)

Yep. That's what I said. (Actually, the SI abbreviation is "k" for kilo, not "K". That's degrees kelvin.) The point is there is no excuse for using Mb for MegaByte. (There are two reasons, laziness and illeteracy.) I could probably understand the ratiionale of "mb", under the auspices of some mantra of efficiency not permiting the wasted effort to extend the smallest finger to touch the shift key whilst typing (but then again I would expect this rule to be uniform across the entire text sample); to use "Mb" when the meaning is MegaByte is just totally unwarranted. It only serves to confuse: "Guess what I mean". I remember when there was great debate about the definition of a "word"; of course it now has been defined as the size of the data parcel of the underlying processor (so it was 1 Byte for the Apple //e (the 6502 is an 8 bit CPU), 2 and 4 Bytes for the PC (which was 16 bit, now 32 bit), and it'll be eight Bytes for the new 64 bit CPUs. A nibble was originally half a Byte, but I'm not sure if that still stands ...

Well, technically there is a feat to allow magic users to ignore penalties due to somatic components, so it is feasible that a mage can cast a spell in armour (and holding a weapon) provided the material and verbal components are met (or also catered for with a comperable feat ...)

... or the google translater actually translated the dang page!

One can argue that KOTOR:2 allowed us to do that via influence. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, yeah, yeah. My point was that we still only had the puppy-kicking, sack-of-kittens-drowning pantomime evil dialogue options. That's the bit I wanted. (And, iirc, that was actually handled better in K1!)

Not the original name for France, Flatus. The word meaning 'nerve'. As in: I have the nerve to correct you. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> In that case you want "gall" For example, I find it galling that you have the nerve to correct me when: a) I was not in error b) You failed to notice/mention the spelling mistake :D <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hey, I was using the cheese-eating-surrender-monkey homonym connotation! That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Is that like Staphylococcus aureus? I don't think I've seen it close enough to tell. It is a little bright, though. I feel like I'm on a highway and there is an accident I need to avoid up ahead ...

The Count roxx0rzzz!

You don't just replace a text-based hyperlink system with speech. Something has to propel the speech to happen, unless they are suggesting everyone just talks without the player activating dialogue. Last I heard from a Bethesda developer, it was hinted that an approach to dialogue trees was being pursued. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I think that's what they mean. The distinction I think they're making is whether the responses are "lifeless [and] text-based", or speech-based. Obviously, the Player has to make text-based comments, but one might argue that that goes without saying. Talking about the swtich from the keyword system to a dialogue tree perhaps isn't quite as interesting as mentioning that the new system will have over 50 hours of speech. ... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I don't like speech for speech's sake. It just doesn't make me more interested, doesn't make me feel more immersed, doesn't add significant depth to the game, in short: it doesn't do it for me. I can read faster than any actor's speech, create the necessary intonations mentally, and imagine better than any developers programme. Speech for text is not the problem. That is froth and bubble. It's what the characters are saying that's important, not their accents. Focusing on the addition of speech makes be think the characters have nothing worthwhile to say ...

What are you talking about? 1 GB = 1024 MB 1 MB = 1024 kB = 1,048,576 Bytes. I Megamile is 1000 miles, but that is because Mega means million in that context. In the IT context it always means 1024. Just as a Giga means 1024 x 1024 = 1048576, except for non bit-wise representations, such as with GigaHertz, where it means six of log base 10. Using a small b is just illiterate. That's my pet peeve. If I have to spend an extra few seconds to calculate the difference between the byte or bit value of the shorthand, then it is inefficient. And all because the writer is too lazy to capitalise the letter? So why not use a lowercase "m" for mega? After all, no-one uses m for mile, do they? Or milli, as in "one thousandth"? Or can we just assume that everyone knows what you are talking about? " It's not like you are proposing an alternate system to SI, either. You're just rationalising your own lacksadaisical attitude. No wonder people outside the IT industry think every in it talks in tongues! It's just lazy. Or illiterate. Or both. And I expect more from you. What connotation are you implying for screw? (Not that I'm infringing on your right as an individual in our politically-correct society to have intimate relations with your pets, but, eeeeeeeewwww!)

Groin of Despair is just a comic relief. His comments are more in jest. Hades and Drakron seem to truly believe what they type, and I've never seen such cynical people in my life, especially about EVERY game that comes out. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hey! I'm cynical, too! :D PS At least your sig is relevant again, GoA!

Oops. :"> I swear that was an E on the map. " <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I did like the AI fireballing the dog. (Only because it was an imaginary dog. If it were a real arcane magic user casting a fireball on a real dog I would be forced to kill them painfully. Probably using fire. And water. And oil. And paper. And some little green peppers.)

It is somewhat pleasing to see that there are some games that you do enjoy. (It is also somewhat disconcerting, as what is the world coming to if you make happy positive statements? )

I'm still reading it, so if anything else pops up, I'll post that too ... © :ph34r: I also posted the bit for the persuassion "minigame" and the "emergent AI" example. As RP said, this sort of thing has been available since AI was invented, so I'm not so sure why they are hyping it so. (Then again, this was the magazinbe that gave K2 something like 89%, and then printed a half-retraction by way of their "Spy" articles reporting on disquiet in these fora. ) The minigame is sort of what we were talking about in a previous thread (the Story thread?). As long as it doesn't end up like the lockpick minigame in Thief ...

Here's the mod homepage: http://corv.cfkasper.de/ They have just advertised and aquired (not sure of the correct terminology for a bunch of volunteers on a mod project, but let's not digress there) new staff, so maybe that will help. (they have just posted their first video teaser ...) Who is ThePal ? Linkie please!

Wading through the sycophantically effusive "preview" of Oblivion in this month's PC Gamer, I did read some interesting stuff, which I shall relate herewith. ... and what makes it most exciting is that it also addresses its shortcomings with almost surgical precision. The lifeless text-based dialogue system has been replaced by an unbelievable 50 hours of speech, including erstwhile Enterprise captain Patrick Stewart as the human emperor. They've wisely given up on the messy stream-of-consciousness journal system, and the new quest log is similar to that of World of Warcraft. Persuasion - which previously degenerated into bribing people until they told you what you wanted - has come a particularly long way. When executive producer Todd Howard decided to put the moves on a bookseller he liked the look of, the new interface popped up. It's a disc with the four compass points labelled with methods of persuasion: joke, admire intimidate, and taunt. You position your cursor for the right balance of methods you think will work, all the while watching their face intently. If you veer toward the obsequious end of flattery, you'll elicit a scowl of distaste as your sycophancy becomes transparent. Once you find a sweetspot between adulation and cool, it'll be obvious from their expression that they're amenable to your tone; so you let go of the mouse button and they react to your line for real. Todd went for a mostly jokey angle, and when he released the mouse button the bookseller chuckled appreciatively: "An orc in a dress? That's a good one." A few more classic jibes at greenskin cross-dressing later, and he got her talking about the attacks on the town. Now much more open with him, the bookseller admitted the violence was starting to scare her. In fact, she could use someone like him around for protection. Would he care to stay the night? He would. This is where the biggest change has taken place: in the private lives of the NPCs. For starters, they now have them. But what we saw was more than the daily routine rhetoric we've heard about before; it was something almost scarily involved. Hanging out in her bedroom, our new 'friend' got on with practising her archery. She had to down an aim-improving concoction before her practice was entirely safe to perform with company, and with her small ldog scampering about. After three bullseyes, she was satisfied and settled down to read. Her dog was still making a nuisance of himself, though, so she found a steak for him and tossed it on the floor. Here's the root of that term 'Radiant AI' you might have heard bandied about: the dog scans within a radius around him, locates the steak, realises it's food and that he's hungry, and gobbles it. Stats boosted, he yapped with renewed vigour, and eventually his mistress

When I buy it, I'll be sure to send you a copy ...

... And you have the gall to criticize Little Britain

You are forgeting the late great Harry Secombe and the comic geniuses Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers in the comedy that pre-dates Monty Python: The Goon Show. Spike Milligan wrote most of the episodes literally whilst in fits of mania (he was very ill with bi-polar disorder for most of his life); there are few who can mach his wit. Put him together with Peter Sellers and you cannot fail to create magic. Another contemporary of brilliantly irreverent Monty Python was The Goodies (Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor): they were all in the Cambridge footlights together. Dudley Moore and yet another comic genius Peter Cook put together Derek & Clive. I have yet to find any humour at the same level, although some of the Black Adder epidodes were pretty good. Hmmm, I think I'll go and watch Dr Strangelove ...

There are in the order of 2000 Bachelor of Science graduates in India every week. One of the driving factors in China's growth is that most of her population are peasants (farmers). There is an unmeasurable amount of growth to be spurtedt oget the country to a level near some of her cities, like Hong Kong, for example.

The entitiy we now know as China has always managed to assimilate all foreign cultures and influences; there is still a strong streak of ancestor worship, for example. (This results in the very laudable respect that Chinese people have for their parents, such that