Or how about mind-controlled battlefield terminators? Where the soldiers have their minds linked up to robots and fight from a safe, remote location? And when everyone has this technology fighting wars would be just like a really expensive video game.
They're already getting a chunk of change from blank disc sales
That's what burns me every time I buy a spindle of discs for burning my home movies to DVD and data backups. I used to think it was OK until I read how much the Canadian Private Copying Collective wants to hike the rates. They want the rates to be 29 cents per CD-R, $50 per iPod with less than 10 GB memory and $10 for any SD card with more than 4GB memory, just to pull a few.
I just sent them an e-mail telling them to go fuck themselves (well a bit more polite than that.)
That money is supposed to go to SOCAN which distributes the money among artists but this bloated waste of office space (300 employees) requires over $34 million per year just to operate. They paid out over $180 million last year, probably most to the CBC.
If you treat customers like potential criminals, then that's what they will become. I used to go out of my way to buy the TV shows I watch and music I listen to. But if I'm paying levies on my blank media and to my college or my ISP punishing me for copies I'll never make, or based on the assumption that I'm going to torrent their shit, maybe I'll just do that then.
Apple did actually license clones at one point, but only for a brief period of time...
The Motorola StarMax computers in the mid-90s. I used a couple of them at work. They weren't bad computers, just ugly. Like fugly ugly. The deal died when Apple refused to continue the partnership.
There's an interesting interview with Dale Blankenship of Motorola just before the partnership ended, where he makes some comments about the future of Apple-clone partnerships. Remember, Apple was in the crapper, with Steve jobs gone, Windows 95 on the rise and OS 9 looking old and tired.
One of the reasons that the Mac-compatible vendors are so important is that it improves the perception of the Mac OS as stable and having long-term support. Part of what has happened to Apple is self-fulfilling prophecies; i.e., "As a user, I'm afraid they might not be successful, so I won't buy their machines", which makes them unsuccessful. User confidence is critical, and I think the other vendors (and Motorola, in particular) help restore that.
Good point, after reading your post I ran Software Update on my Tiger machine at work and found a 72.5 MB security update waiting to be downloaded and installed.
And most of the updates seem to be the kind of stuff that gets patched on Windows machines.
I guess Apples and PCs have many of the same security issues, the difference is that fewer people care to exploit them on Macs and also that it's easier to take advantage of click-happy users on a Windows computer to pull off an exploit. "Durr... naked pictures of Britney? CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKpwned."
Why is advertising in schools and on public property OK? Shouldn't schools be a neutral place for learning, critical thinking and discussion without corporate interference?
Hear, hear. So logically, anything that appears complicated does not show evidence of design? God is a simpleton? Eyeballs are complicated, so therefore they were not designed? What the hell does that statement mean?
I know I'm beating up on a bad summary, but this is just too trippy. Pass the bong.
I actually liked it better than UFO: Enemy Unknown" but the ship terror missions made me swear. A lot. Plus your guys literally started the game with pyjamas and blowguns.
I do seem to remember some tentacled critters, it's been a long time though.
You know, I am really tired of Bethesda's lies and spin. Maybe it's not lying exactly to say, ohh, we don't know yet if we're going to release a toolkit, it's a lot of work" and then announce it one month after the game launches, but it's pretty cynical. They know the modding community kept Morrowind and Oblivion alive and selling copies far longer than the duration of their in-house content for the game ever could. They know the modding community encouraged sales of their game. But instead of saying thanks they treat them like competitors. They probably had this in the bag months ago but held off on announcing the Fallout 3 toolkit because they wanted to make sure free mods wouldn't be competing with their paid downloadable content. If they can get their downloadable crap out first, they can make some money before the modders are unleashed. Plus, they know the modders will really make the game shine and show how inadequate their "professional" product was in the first place.
If they had opened the game up to the modding community in a closed beta months ago (even hired them as consultants, imagine that) and let them tweak and tune the game, I bet the finished product would have been something that would have pleased a wider variety of fans, would have been more polished and would have been an instant classic, like the first game. And would have sold buttloads more copies. But no, instead modders get treated with suspicion and we get a bunch of corporate double-talk.
Maybe I will buy this game in two years, when I find it in the bargain bin and there are gigabytes worth of great mods to improve it, but I'm sick of Bethesda's crap. If I want to play a good RPG I'll play the Witcher, created by a design studio which actually listened to its fans enough to create an enhanced edition and new quests, all downloadable for FREE.
Ultima IX didn't have loading screens, and the occasional pauses were less than a second.
The occasional pauses of laughter at the game's seemingly endless bugs, however, were longer. And watching the Avatar occasionally fall through the world certainly broke that fourth wall.
One game I've played recently that has no discernible load zones is Titan Quest, which lets you run from one end of the world to the other with no waiting.
Another with horrible jarring "LOADING" waiting is the Half-Life 2 series. They don't happen often, but they are annoying.
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
As you've aptly pointed out, it is very possible to be ethical but immoral at the same time. Asimov's laws would prevent a robot from engaging in immoral activity (the word "injure" has a broad meaning) but would also prevent robots from being used as killing machines. So our choices are either "Bicentennial Man" or battlefield terminators. And I guess the government wants battlefield terminators.
anybody have any recommendations of any more good games (for the PC preferably, and definitely no handhelds like the OP) that meld 2D and 3D like the aforementioned? Especially RPGs or strategy games with a good story?
Well, I don't know how much 3D-2D "melding" you're looking for, but The Witcher for PC uses the Aurora engine (same one which powered Knights of the Old Republic) with some significant modifications. The game lets you play in over-the-shoulder mode, for a closer-to-the-action perspective, or you can zoom out and play from an isometric perspective, making it more like an old-school PC RPG (Ultima series, e.g.). The whole game is 3D and has an excellent story, non-linear gameplay and lots of choices to make, things to do and women to woo.
Also, the Warhammer 40K Dawn of War series is a 3D strategy series, and lets you manipulate the camera as much or as little as you like, your choice. Play it in a Starcraft perspective, or zoom in to the battlefield to watch your space marines hack an Ork to pieces with a ripper.
Think food, and "tourism." It's working with farming bison, an animal which was almost extinct. The meat is leaner than regular beef and sells well, but the real money comes from hee-haws with large-calibre weapons who like shooting big hairy cows in open fields. Imagine how much money they'd shell out to blow away a woolly mammoth.
And for the record - whoever came up with the "jurassicbabar" tag, I love you.
"In response to the government's policy direction, we have launched a new market-oriented approach to telecom regulation. We are giving priority to market forces, and we will intervene only when market failure makes it necessary."
- Konrad von Finckenstein, head of the CRTC, June 17, 2008 speech in Toronto
Translation: companies - do whatever the hell you want. And customers - fuck you.
While I agree with some of what you're saying, I do believe the study is unbiased and got its funding from a neutral source. The MacArthur foundation has $7 billion worth of investments. It uses the money it makes each year from those investments to fund projects, non-profit organizations and studies like this one.
No one on the board of directors has any overt or influential ties to the gaming industry, tech industry or social networking giants.
I don't think the study is a load of tripe, but like you I don't think we should all rush to plop our kids in front of a computer screen and sign them up in Second Life/WoW because "it's educational!" At best it's edutainment or inspires some kids who were already technically inclined to learn more.
This is what I think is the most important lesson from the study:
"It concludes that learning today is becoming increasingly peer-based and networked, and this is important to consider as we begin to re-imagine education in the 21st century." (Connie Yowell, Ph.D., Director of Education at the MacArthur Foundation)
As long as it's balanced with real life "social networking" online interaction is beneficial. But if the next generation of young people enter the real world knowing nothing but how to text each other, run a successful WoW raid and manage friends on Facebook, we're looking at an epidemic of cognitive dissonance.
If the publishers had their own channel to sell the games used, where they got the profit from the used sale, I'm sure they would be exploiting it directly.
Maybe they should buy shares in EB Games, then. I can't see any publisher putting much effort into selling used games when many can't even be bothered to provide follow-up and technical support to the retail products they do sell. Investing or partnering with an existing outlet might be the way to go - "Bring in three used EA titles and get 25 per cent off a new EA title" or something like that.
The following quote from TFA kind of irritated me, but I think he's right:
A used copy of Rock Band may go through several owners, but each one of them may give Harmonix money for their own personal rights to 'Baba O'Riley' or 'I Fought the Law.'
That's probably a good idea. Downloadable content would be an easy way to make money off the same game several times, without punishing the second-hand buyer by locking them out of the extra content, just making them pay a few bucks for it.
I have bought many used games because I just can't afford the release date prices. Charging $5 for an exclusive expansion or downloadable map pack for something I bought used would not be unbearable. I also look for the weekend deals on Steam (Got Overlord for $10) and bargain bin deals in retail stores (Titan Quest for $10). Are publishers making money on those? Probably, I imagine the retail store eats the cost on the bargain bin titles and I imagine Steam is still profitable even when the titles are deeply discounted.
According to the company's website, which does have pictures of the design for anyone who is interested, this could be used with other energy sources than wind:
While this overview focuses primarily on the wind applications, VIEG Technology is expected to have a material impact on the economic viability of a wide range of renewable energy applications.
There you go. I predict this could be more applicable in tidal energy than traditional big-dam hydro, although it might be useful in small, run-of-the-river projects to make them more efficient. They might even be useful in big run-of-the-river projects, which will create over 1,000 megawatts of new electricity in the next few years in British Columbia alone.
That made me laugh out loud! And snort milk out my nose. Well, not really. But I did laugh. Well, chuckled, anyway. If I had mod points I'd have modded you funny.
Slashdot Mirror
Or how about mind-controlled battlefield terminators? Where the soldiers have their minds linked up to robots and fight from a safe, remote location? And when everyone has this technology fighting wars would be just like a really expensive video game.
They're already getting a chunk of change from blank disc sales
That's what burns me every time I buy a spindle of discs for burning my home movies to DVD and data backups. I used to think it was OK until I read how much the Canadian Private Copying Collective wants to hike the rates. They want the rates to be 29 cents per CD-R, $50 per iPod with less than 10 GB memory and $10 for any SD card with more than 4GB memory, just to pull a few.
I just sent them an e-mail telling them to go fuck themselves (well a bit more polite than that.)
That money is supposed to go to SOCAN which distributes the money among artists but this bloated waste of office space (300 employees) requires over $34 million per year just to operate. They paid out over $180 million last year, probably most to the CBC.
If you treat customers like potential criminals, then that's what they will become. I used to go out of my way to buy the TV shows I watch and music I listen to. But if I'm paying levies on my blank media and to my college or my ISP punishing me for copies I'll never make, or based on the assumption that I'm going to torrent their shit, maybe I'll just do that then.
Apple did actually license clones at one point, but only for a brief period of time...
The Motorola StarMax computers in the mid-90s. I used a couple of them at work. They weren't bad computers, just ugly. Like fugly ugly. The deal died when Apple refused to continue the partnership.
There's an interesting interview with Dale Blankenship of Motorola just before the partnership ended, where he makes some comments about the future of Apple-clone partnerships. Remember, Apple was in the crapper, with Steve jobs gone, Windows 95 on the rise and OS 9 looking old and tired.
One of the reasons that the Mac-compatible vendors are so important is that it improves the perception of the Mac OS as stable and having long-term support. Part of what has happened to Apple is self-fulfilling prophecies; i.e., "As a user, I'm afraid they might not be successful, so I won't buy their machines", which makes them unsuccessful. User confidence is critical, and I think the other vendors (and Motorola, in particular) help restore that.
In contrast to this previous legitimate partnership, Psystar smells like a venture capital scam, or the Phantom console all over again.
Good point, after reading your post I ran Software Update on my Tiger machine at work and found a 72.5 MB security update waiting to be downloaded and installed.
And most of the updates seem to be the kind of stuff that gets patched on Windows machines.
I guess Apples and PCs have many of the same security issues, the difference is that fewer people care to exploit them on Macs and also that it's easier to take advantage of click-happy users on a Windows computer to pull off an exploit. "Durr... naked pictures of Britney? CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKpwned."
Why is advertising in schools and on public property OK? Shouldn't schools be a neutral place for learning, critical thinking and discussion without corporate interference?
Why should a fundamental human right be something which can be bought and sold?
How come everyone assumes people won't accept a tax increase to fund education?
Why do the people who complain about higher taxes line up at Wal-Mart on Black Friday to buy bagloads of crap they don't really need?
Why is there always money for wars no one wants but never enough for education?
Hear, hear. So logically, anything that appears complicated does not show evidence of design? God is a simpleton? Eyeballs are complicated, so therefore they were not designed? What the hell does that statement mean?
I know I'm beating up on a bad summary, but this is just too trippy. Pass the bong.
Send me a pm and tell me what you think...
OK, what about the UFO series from Altar? I never played them but lots of people like them.
There's also the open-source Project Xenocide which looks cool (haven't tried it though.)
You don't get games like that anymore
Actually, you can.
Steam does an awesome job of making old games work with Dosbox. Just download and start fraggin' those lobstermen, man. Men.
I actually liked it better than UFO: Enemy Unknown" but the ship terror missions made me swear. A lot. Plus your guys literally started the game with pyjamas and blowguns.
I do seem to remember some tentacled critters, it's been a long time though.
It actually made me want to fire up XCom 2 and go destroy some underwater aliens! FWOOSH-BLEAH!
You know, I am really tired of Bethesda's lies and spin. Maybe it's not lying exactly to say, ohh, we don't know yet if we're going to release a toolkit, it's a lot of work" and then announce it one month after the game launches, but it's pretty cynical. They know the modding community kept Morrowind and Oblivion alive and selling copies far longer than the duration of their in-house content for the game ever could. They know the modding community encouraged sales of their game. But instead of saying thanks they treat them like competitors. They probably had this in the bag months ago but held off on announcing the Fallout 3 toolkit because they wanted to make sure free mods wouldn't be competing with their paid downloadable content. If they can get their downloadable crap out first, they can make some money before the modders are unleashed. Plus, they know the modders will really make the game shine and show how inadequate their "professional" product was in the first place.
If they had opened the game up to the modding community in a closed beta months ago (even hired them as consultants, imagine that) and let them tweak and tune the game, I bet the finished product would have been something that would have pleased a wider variety of fans, would have been more polished and would have been an instant classic, like the first game. And would have sold buttloads more copies. But no, instead modders get treated with suspicion and we get a bunch of corporate double-talk.
Maybe I will buy this game in two years, when I find it in the bargain bin and there are gigabytes worth of great mods to improve it, but I'm sick of Bethesda's crap. If I want to play a good RPG I'll play the Witcher, created by a design studio which actually listened to its fans enough to create an enhanced edition and new quests, all downloadable for FREE.
Ultima IX didn't have loading screens, and the occasional pauses were less than a second.
The occasional pauses of laughter at the game's seemingly endless bugs, however, were longer. And watching the Avatar occasionally fall through the world certainly broke that fourth wall.
One game I've played recently that has no discernible load zones is Titan Quest, which lets you run from one end of the world to the other with no waiting.
Another with horrible jarring "LOADING" waiting is the Half-Life 2 series. They don't happen often, but they are annoying.
I think it's probably more related to the THC
And I guess we can give up on Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics ever being anything but science fiction.
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
As you've aptly pointed out, it is very possible to be ethical but immoral at the same time. Asimov's laws would prevent a robot from engaging in immoral activity (the word "injure" has a broad meaning) but would also prevent robots from being used as killing machines. So our choices are either "Bicentennial Man" or battlefield terminators. And I guess the government wants battlefield terminators.
anybody have any recommendations of any more good games (for the PC preferably, and definitely no handhelds like the OP) that meld 2D and 3D like the aforementioned? Especially RPGs or strategy games with a good story?
Well, I don't know how much 3D-2D "melding" you're looking for, but The Witcher for PC uses the Aurora engine (same one which powered Knights of the Old Republic) with some significant modifications. The game lets you play in over-the-shoulder mode, for a closer-to-the-action perspective, or you can zoom out and play from an isometric perspective, making it more like an old-school PC RPG (Ultima series, e.g.). The whole game is 3D and has an excellent story, non-linear gameplay and lots of choices to make, things to do and women to woo.
Also, the Warhammer 40K Dawn of War series is a 3D strategy series, and lets you manipulate the camera as much or as little as you like, your choice. Play it in a Starcraft perspective, or zoom in to the battlefield to watch your space marines hack an Ork to pieces with a ripper.
Ohhh, snap you beat me to it! Well played.
Think food, and "tourism." It's working with farming bison, an animal which was almost extinct. The meat is leaner than regular beef and sells well, but the real money comes from hee-haws with large-calibre weapons who like shooting big hairy cows in open fields. Imagine how much money they'd shell out to blow away a woolly mammoth.
And for the record - whoever came up with the "jurassicbabar" tag, I love you.
"In response to the government's policy direction, we have launched a new market-oriented approach to telecom regulation. We are giving priority to market forces, and we will intervene only when market failure makes it necessary."
- Konrad von Finckenstein, head of the CRTC, June 17, 2008 speech in Toronto
Translation: companies - do whatever the hell you want. And customers - fuck you.
Sign me up on the "Abolish CRTC" campaign.
While I agree with some of what you're saying, I do believe the study is unbiased and got its funding from a neutral source. The MacArthur foundation has $7 billion worth of investments. It uses the money it makes each year from those investments to fund projects, non-profit organizations and studies like this one.
No one on the board of directors has any overt or influential ties to the gaming industry, tech industry or social networking giants.
I don't think the study is a load of tripe, but like you I don't think we should all rush to plop our kids in front of a computer screen and sign them up in Second Life/WoW because "it's educational!" At best it's edutainment or inspires some kids who were already technically inclined to learn more.
This is what I think is the most important lesson from the study:
"It concludes that learning today is becoming increasingly peer-based and networked, and this is important to consider as we begin to re-imagine education in the 21st century." (Connie Yowell, Ph.D., Director of Education at the MacArthur Foundation)
As long as it's balanced with real life "social networking" online interaction is beneficial. But if the next generation of young people enter the real world knowing nothing but how to text each other, run a successful WoW raid and manage friends on Facebook, we're looking at an epidemic of cognitive dissonance.
caused spontaneous erections after being injected in rats.
For the rats, right? Please say yes.
If the publishers had their own channel to sell the games used, where they got the profit from the used sale, I'm sure they would be exploiting it directly.
Maybe they should buy shares in EB Games, then. I can't see any publisher putting much effort into selling used games when many can't even be bothered to provide follow-up and technical support to the retail products they do sell. Investing or partnering with an existing outlet might be the way to go - "Bring in three used EA titles and get 25 per cent off a new EA title" or something like that.
The following quote from TFA kind of irritated me, but I think he's right:
A used copy of Rock Band may go through several owners, but each one of them may give Harmonix money for their own personal rights to 'Baba O'Riley' or 'I Fought the Law.'
That's probably a good idea. Downloadable content would be an easy way to make money off the same game several times, without punishing the second-hand buyer by locking them out of the extra content, just making them pay a few bucks for it.
I have bought many used games because I just can't afford the release date prices. Charging $5 for an exclusive expansion or downloadable map pack for something I bought used would not be unbearable. I also look for the weekend deals on Steam (Got Overlord for $10) and bargain bin deals in retail stores (Titan Quest for $10). Are publishers making money on those? Probably, I imagine the retail store eats the cost on the bargain bin titles and I imagine Steam is still profitable even when the titles are deeply discounted.
According to the company's website, which does have pictures of the design for anyone who is interested, this could be used with other energy sources than wind:
While this overview focuses primarily on the wind applications, VIEG Technology is expected to have a material impact on the economic viability of a wide range of renewable energy applications.
There you go. I predict this could be more applicable in tidal energy than traditional big-dam hydro, although it might be useful in small, run-of-the-river projects to make them more efficient. They might even be useful in big run-of-the-river projects, which will create over 1,000 megawatts of new electricity in the next few years in British Columbia alone.
That made me laugh out loud! And snort milk out my nose. Well, not really. But I did laugh. Well, chuckled, anyway. If I had mod points I'd have modded you funny.
This scammer got tattooed, all right.