Very true, and I think that's why so many of the "traditional journalists" have been publicly stating their disdain and even fear of blogging in general.
Not just because they're afraid of being replaced, but they're afraid of being replaced by people who suck at what they're doing.
Real journalism requires fact checking, editing, at least some level of peer review, etc...all to establish some credibility for what's reported. Even if the more traditional journalists start their own blogs, where this sort of thing happens, it's often times not easy for a reader to discern whether or not that is the case.
If there isn't an institutionalized restriction of "freedom of the press" in order to bring this all in check, then the public will eventually just tune out more and more media, as they learn that they can't take for granted that any of it has any sort of validity. Or they'll just lean towards blogs/sites that spout off the same sort of stuff that they already believe (as has quickly happened with most political blogs), and read what they want to read. Either way, the cause of truth doesn't really get advanced, and in that sense, journalism fails.
That being said, I think traditional journalism is currently doing a pretty sorry job, I just don't think blogs are going to be its salvation, or a suitable replacement.
Novak isn't getting off the hook because of first amendment rights. He's getting a free pass because he's a mouthpiece for the current government administration. There are other people involved in that case who are having a very rough time with it.
The mac mini qualifies as news less for its form factor and more for its price. An actual Apple computer for $500? Scandalous. It's certainly applicable to slashdot, where for years people have been talking about how they're fascinated by OSX, they respect the general quality of Apple's hardware, they just couldn't justify the high prices for a machine to play around on.
All of a sudden, an entry level Mac is now truly entry level on price. And a lot of people have said that price was the biggest thing that PC's had over Macs.
The empty box from intel is interesting just because it's so obviously inspired (copied) from Apple. It really looks like they just painted over the apple logo, put a couple lines across it, and glued a little digital clock to it. It's amusing for the same reason that the early imac knockoffs were. There's hundreds of ways to make an all-in-one machine, and using curvy, translucent, brightly colored plastic isn't the most obvious one. I'm all for sharing and the progression of knowledge, but there's a difference between building upon what came before, and just throwing out a me-too product.
I think that's his point, except he's talking about slightly larger groupings. It's like when I get a box of mike&ike's, and I really feel like a red one, but all that keeps coming out is yellow. Dammit! I hate yellow! Random my ass! Some jerk at the factory purposely took reds out of my box and replaced them with the crappy colors.
Except that they didn't, these sorts of things just tend to happen with randomness.
A few years back I was working retail at a store where the manager told us to require ID for all credit card purchases. Some people would get so upset about it. I don't know if it was because they believed that we were accusing them of being dishonest, or if they were just lazy.
There's plenty to be said about not treating your customers like criminals (DRM, copy-protection), but it seems to me that, as a consumer, I have just as much to gain from protecting my credit card as a business does.
Interestingly enough, I've heard that part of some contracts that retail outlets and credit card companies make nowadays specifcally state that the credit card companies do not want you to check ID's. Apparently they want credit cards to be as convenient as possible so that consumers will ring up as much debt as possible, so the banks can collect interest and fees. I guess if that's true, the ratio of fraud to legit purposes isn't so bad.
I've got see-ID on the back of my cards too. Sometimes they'll flip the card over and pretend to look at it, then give it back without asking for ID. Amazing. If they do ask for ID, I make it a point to thank them.
Your analogy doesn't hold up for a couple reasons. First off, all these lines of copper and fiber travel across a lot of property, some public owned, a lot of it privately owned, and digging all those holes is expensive, annoying, and time consuming. And then those cables take up space. That's the whole reason that utility monopolies were created in the first place. I wouldn't mind 14 different broadband companies vying for my business, but I would mind 14 different companies having cables under the street in front of my house. That's 14x as much stuff to break. That's 14 times as much stuff to upgrade if it becomes necessary. that's 14 times as much digging up my sidewalk, which I don't want to deal with.
Utility companies were given their monopolies because it was believed that that served the public good. Now there's a better option, not to mention the fact that the utilities companies do their best to screw us all over as much as they can.
All those big piles of money that those corporations used to lay all that fiber, they had that because the government handed them a monopoly in the past. It was a gift to them. Now We the people are calling in favor that they owe us. They'll just need to learn to share.
Seriously. Sam and Max was a comic book with a relatively similar mix of humor and bizarre realities, and lucas arts made a fantastic adventure game out of it so many years back.
It's the perfect gametype for something like this, because it can be tightly scripted to allow for good writers to fill it with humor, but at the same time, it's very interactive, and requires experimentation and imagination. And all the stuff that doesn't work usually at least invokes an amusing quote or something.
Sharing trade secrets is only illegal if you've signed a contract saying you won't. An NDA is a well accepted and legal contract, and so there's a system in place to help enforce them, and to punish people who violate them.
If my company was taking inadequate safety precautions on their oil tankers, and they decided to keep it secret by making all their employees sign an NDA, I think anyone reasonable could see that a contract like that should be null and void. If you told someone about it, good luck to that company trying to sue you for breaking an NDA like that.
Microsoft discontinued IE for macs. I don't think Apple would be dumb enough to add something like that to Safari.
Even if macs somehow gained 10-20% market share over the next few years, it wouldn't make much sense for websites to require it. Pages require such an operating system specific function will only occur when you've got 95%+ marketshare for a single browser, which we're unlikely to ever see again.
There is a lot of competitiveness, if you go looking for it. And it manifests itself on a few different levels. There's things like one-on-one sword fighting and swordfighting (or drinking) tournaments. There's PVP sea battles. On a larger scale, flags (allied groupings of crews) can wage war on each other, and battle for control of the different islands in the game. There's actually some pretty intense political wrangling going on within the game, if you wish to get involved in it.
As for character development competitivness, there's an ingame economy, so there are of course people who's whole motivation is to amass more money than everyone else. The game does also give you stats on your performance in different puzzles, although you're ranked in more general categories (novice, able, respected, master, ultimate, etc...), instead of seeing a numerical value, sort of like how karma works on/. now.
Usually when there's insults flying, it's good natured, except on the puzzle pirate forums, which I tend to avoid.
None of the big hyped games have done it becauese they're counting on the hype to convince consumers to kick open their wallets and send them an extra $50 a shot.
Some of the smaller companies with smaller game make their software free, and often offer a week or so free trial.
Puzzle Pirates and Second Life are two that come to mind immediately. Infact, with second life, for $10 once, you can spend an unlimited amount of time online. You only have to pay monthly if you wish to own "land" in the game, and there are even ways around that if you can make enough in game currency.
Exactly. Not to mention, have you ever tried doing CAD or graphics work on a trackpad? If so, you're making life really difficult for yourself. If you're doing serious work on a laptop, you're probably going to be carrying a mouse anyways.
Something else, sort of conncted to the ipod market saturation and appliance computer aspects, is the cultural status of Apple. Thanks to the success of the ipod, Apple isn't just cool within it's own little cult of fanatics, but it's cool in a much wider sense, in terms of music, fashion, teenagers, etc.
The big apple logo and ipod-ish styling on the mini will do wonders for its sales, tapping in to a consumer brand awareness that Apple never had before, despite all of its innovations throughout its history.
While EA has done some undoubtedly crummy things, be generous with the blame. From what I've read, it seems that it was the NFL's idea to go with an exclusive contract, and they requested bids. EA had the most to lose, not to mention a whole lot of resources, so their bid won out. It's crappy what it does to the football game genre, but it sounds like they really didn't have a choice if they wanted to keep producing a very sucessful franchise.
I love football, and I really enjoy watching NFL games, but they suck for going for an exclusive deal. I don't think I'd have any chance in the corporate world, I just can't imagine being that greedy.
Hell yeah! I loved my super scope. Even my dad, who generally had very little interest in video games, he loved using the super scope. Although he refused to hold it like a bazooka, instead preferring to "shoot from the hip". His aim generally sucked, but he had fun.
Well, as much as some in the administration might want to attack Iran, I really don't think it's going to happen (unless Iran does something extremely provocative). While still dealing with Iraq and sort of Afghanistan, the US does not have the will or the soldiers to do much in Iran; no matter how tough the administration talks. I mean, I guess we could bomb it, but that would accomplish nothing beyond tarnishing our international standing even further. But I guess that could happen.
As for a 'regieme' change, a la Iraq, we're a little short on soldiers, and I don't see a draft being a very popular option. Even if we could manage to do it with available soldiers, I don't think anyone outside of the president's inner circle, and a few members of congress would come close to supporting it.
Perhaps if the upcoming elections in Iraq are wildly sucessful beyond anyone's craziest dreams, but I wouldn't count on that.
The best part is that my gf likes it. She's definitely a gamer, but she's not much into games like Halo that require you to take the time to learn what every button does before you can play it effectively.
Burnout 3 has a good learning curve if you want to really improve your game, but at the same time, someone who's never even held an xbox controller before can jump right in and have a good time.
The worst part is that since it's all we play when she's over, when she's not here I play other games, and that's allowed her to be better at burnout than I am. I hate losing.
I don't think so. They'll probably wait until the post-convention hype has died down a little bit more, then release some big numbers to get their new computer in the news again. I'd also expect seperate announcements for the ipod shuffle, so that each product can get its own set of media mentions.
Are you kidding, this is the best thing to ever happen to us techies! All I need to do is get my mom and my grandparents to replaces their piece of crap, cheap-ass gateways/dells; and all of a sudden, my family tech support responsibilities will drop by ridiculous amount.
With all the new free time I'll have, I'll need a new hobby. Maybe I'll finally start drinking.
Yeah, you're pretty much spot on. It's part of the growing pains of any new type of media/entertainment, and the attacks come from a few angles.
There's the "When I was your age, I didn't need that" deal, which is more a resistence to change or just a misunderstanding of how/why changes are happening.
It's a more valid complaint, which TV also gets, that video games are both less physical and less social than many other forms of entertainment, and this can lead to people sort of losing touch with reality. Sure, this doesn't happen to everyone, or even to a majority, but it's still a concern. Online gaming is also making video games more social, although at the moment, it's pretty hit or miss.
There's also a valid argument that parents can allow the TV/nintendo to babysit their children too much, and with various negative results appearing in some cases. This is arguably a social problem, not an inherent problem with games, but it's hard to seperate them sometimes.
So why don't books get the same bad rap? They can lead to the same things. I think as games have progressed, they're developing a lot more potential to provide a similar intellectual stimulation that reading can do. But this has take time, and will continue to evolve. Playing pac-man for nine hours a day would make you a better pac-man player, but I don't think it'd do much else for you. While reading for nine hours a day would help you read faster, help your writing and communicating abilities, increase your vocabulary, etc. And if you're reading good stuff, you might learn something.
There are, of course, crap books as well, I'm not sure why they don't take that much flak. Probably because they've been around long enough that people got tired of complaining.
Often times when I make a silly little mistake, whatever I'm doing, my first thought is apple-z (I'm a mac guy), but ctrl-z will do. Undo is the single greatest productivity boost I think I've ever seen. If it could be applied to the real world more often, lie would be about a zillion times easier.
The problem with that is that Nintendo makes pretty damn decent hardware. Their decision to neglect online gaming so far seems a bit odd, because the gamecube can take an online adapter. The gamecube is a small, solid piece of equipment, and I don't understand what more you can really ask for from a game console. Oh, and the company has always made money on each system that they've sold. Sounds good to me.
What are you talking about? They're not just selling the same thing repeatedly. (Well, some older games are getting ported to their handhelds, but that's different). They're just taking a character(and his related world/universe) and placing him in unsual games, and seeing how it affects gameplay. And a lot of it turns out being pretty darn cool.
I think it's a pretty fascinating way to come up with new gameplay. Mario brings with him a whole bunch of cool stuff. His famous abilities, yoshi, parahnia plants, turtle shells, shyguys, etc... all stuff that doesn't make any sense outside of the mario universe. And then the designers have to find ways to make all of those strange things fit in to a new game type. That's a great way to spur some innovation. And it can be made to work.
So someone might buy Mario Golf, or Mario Tennis, or Super Smash Bros. just because they recognize Mario. Or maybe they want a golf/tennis/or melee type game. Either way. they're still getting a damn fine game, and if you've actually played any of them, you'd know that.
Slashdot Mirror
Very true, and I think that's why so many of the "traditional journalists" have been publicly stating their disdain and even fear of blogging in general.
Not just because they're afraid of being replaced, but they're afraid of being replaced by people who suck at what they're doing.
Real journalism requires fact checking, editing, at least some level of peer review, etc...all to establish some credibility for what's reported. Even if the more traditional journalists start their own blogs, where this sort of thing happens, it's often times not easy for a reader to discern whether or not that is the case.
If there isn't an institutionalized restriction of "freedom of the press" in order to bring this all in check, then the public will eventually just tune out more and more media, as they learn that they can't take for granted that any of it has any sort of validity. Or they'll just lean towards blogs/sites that spout off the same sort of stuff that they already believe (as has quickly happened with most political blogs), and read what they want to read. Either way, the cause of truth doesn't really get advanced, and in that sense, journalism fails.
That being said, I think traditional journalism is currently doing a pretty sorry job, I just don't think blogs are going to be its salvation, or a suitable replacement.
Novak isn't getting off the hook because of first amendment rights. He's getting a free pass because he's a mouthpiece for the current government administration. There are other people involved in that case who are having a very rough time with it.
The mac mini qualifies as news less for its form factor and more for its price. An actual Apple computer for $500? Scandalous. It's certainly applicable to slashdot, where for years people have been talking about how they're fascinated by OSX, they respect the general quality of Apple's hardware, they just couldn't justify the high prices for a machine to play around on.
All of a sudden, an entry level Mac is now truly entry level on price. And a lot of people have said that price was the biggest thing that PC's had over Macs.
The empty box from intel is interesting just because it's so obviously inspired (copied) from Apple. It really looks like they just painted over the apple logo, put a couple lines across it, and glued a little digital clock to it. It's amusing for the same reason that the early imac knockoffs were. There's hundreds of ways to make an all-in-one machine, and using curvy, translucent, brightly colored plastic isn't the most obvious one. I'm all for sharing and the progression of knowledge, but there's a difference between building upon what came before, and just throwing out a me-too product.
I think that's his point, except he's talking about slightly larger groupings. It's like when I get a box of mike&ike's, and I really feel like a red one, but all that keeps coming out is yellow. Dammit! I hate yellow! Random my ass! Some jerk at the factory purposely took reds out of my box and replaced them with the crappy colors.
Except that they didn't, these sorts of things just tend to happen with randomness.
A few years back I was working retail at a store where the manager told us to require ID for all credit card purchases. Some people would get so upset about it. I don't know if it was because they believed that we were accusing them of being dishonest, or if they were just lazy.
There's plenty to be said about not treating your customers like criminals (DRM, copy-protection), but it seems to me that, as a consumer, I have just as much to gain from protecting my credit card as a business does.
Interestingly enough, I've heard that part of some contracts that retail outlets and credit card companies make nowadays specifcally state that the credit card companies do not want you to check ID's. Apparently they want credit cards to be as convenient as possible so that consumers will ring up as much debt as possible, so the banks can collect interest and fees. I guess if that's true, the ratio of fraud to legit purposes isn't so bad.
I've got see-ID on the back of my cards too. Sometimes they'll flip the card over and pretend to look at it, then give it back without asking for ID. Amazing. If they do ask for ID, I make it a point to thank them.
Your analogy doesn't hold up for a couple reasons. First off, all these lines of copper and fiber travel across a lot of property, some public owned, a lot of it privately owned, and digging all those holes is expensive, annoying, and time consuming. And then those cables take up space. That's the whole reason that utility monopolies were created in the first place. I wouldn't mind 14 different broadband companies vying for my business, but I would mind 14 different companies having cables under the street in front of my house. That's 14x as much stuff to break. That's 14 times as much stuff to upgrade if it becomes necessary. that's 14 times as much digging up my sidewalk, which I don't want to deal with.
Utility companies were given their monopolies because it was believed that that served the public good. Now there's a better option, not to mention the fact that the utilities companies do their best to screw us all over as much as they can.
All those big piles of money that those corporations used to lay all that fiber, they had that because the government handed them a monopoly in the past. It was a gift to them. Now We the people are calling in favor that they owe us. They'll just need to learn to share.
Seriously. Sam and Max was a comic book with a relatively similar mix of humor and bizarre realities, and lucas arts made a fantastic adventure game out of it so many years back.
It's the perfect gametype for something like this, because it can be tightly scripted to allow for good writers to fill it with humor, but at the same time, it's very interactive, and requires experimentation and imagination. And all the stuff that doesn't work usually at least invokes an amusing quote or something.
Sharing trade secrets is only illegal if you've signed a contract saying you won't. An NDA is a well accepted and legal contract, and so there's a system in place to help enforce them, and to punish people who violate them.
If my company was taking inadequate safety precautions on their oil tankers, and they decided to keep it secret by making all their employees sign an NDA, I think anyone reasonable could see that a contract like that should be null and void. If you told someone about it, good luck to that company trying to sue you for breaking an NDA like that.
Microsoft discontinued IE for macs. I don't think Apple would be dumb enough to add something like that to Safari.
Even if macs somehow gained 10-20% market share over the next few years, it wouldn't make much sense for websites to require it. Pages require such an operating system specific function will only occur when you've got 95%+ marketshare for a single browser, which we're unlikely to ever see again.
There is a lot of competitiveness, if you go looking for it. And it manifests itself on a few different levels. There's things like one-on-one sword fighting and swordfighting (or drinking) tournaments. There's PVP sea battles. On a larger scale, flags (allied groupings of crews) can wage war on each other, and battle for control of the different islands in the game. There's actually some pretty intense political wrangling going on within the game, if you wish to get involved in it.
/. now.
As for character development competitivness, there's an ingame economy, so there are of course people who's whole motivation is to amass more money than everyone else. The game does also give you stats on your performance in different puzzles, although you're ranked in more general categories (novice, able, respected, master, ultimate, etc...), instead of seeing a numerical value, sort of like how karma works on
Usually when there's insults flying, it's good natured, except on the puzzle pirate forums, which I tend to avoid.
None of the big hyped games have done it becauese they're counting on the hype to convince consumers to kick open their wallets and send them an extra $50 a shot.
Some of the smaller companies with smaller game make their software free, and often offer a week or so free trial.
Puzzle Pirates and Second Life are two that come to mind immediately. Infact, with second life, for $10 once, you can spend an unlimited amount of time online. You only have to pay monthly if you wish to own "land" in the game, and there are even ways around that if you can make enough in game currency.
Exactly. Not to mention, have you ever tried doing CAD or graphics work on a trackpad? If so, you're making life really difficult for yourself. If you're doing serious work on a laptop, you're probably going to be carrying a mouse anyways.
If you can afford Quark, you can afford a mouse with more buttons. There's lots to pick from.
Something else, sort of conncted to the ipod market saturation and appliance computer aspects, is the cultural status of Apple. Thanks to the success of the ipod, Apple isn't just cool within it's own little cult of fanatics, but it's cool in a much wider sense, in terms of music, fashion, teenagers, etc.
The big apple logo and ipod-ish styling on the mini will do wonders for its sales, tapping in to a consumer brand awareness that Apple never had before, despite all of its innovations throughout its history.
While EA has done some undoubtedly crummy things, be generous with the blame. From what I've read, it seems that it was the NFL's idea to go with an exclusive contract, and they requested bids. EA had the most to lose, not to mention a whole lot of resources, so their bid won out. It's crappy what it does to the football game genre, but it sounds like they really didn't have a choice if they wanted to keep producing a very sucessful franchise.
I love football, and I really enjoy watching NFL games, but they suck for going for an exclusive deal. I don't think I'd have any chance in the corporate world, I just can't imagine being that greedy.
Hell yeah! I loved my super scope. Even my dad, who generally had very little interest in video games, he loved using the super scope. Although he refused to hold it like a bazooka, instead preferring to "shoot from the hip". His aim generally sucked, but he had fun.
Well, as much as some in the administration might want to attack Iran, I really don't think it's going to happen (unless Iran does something extremely provocative). While still dealing with Iraq and sort of Afghanistan, the US does not have the will or the soldiers to do much in Iran; no matter how tough the administration talks. I mean, I guess we could bomb it, but that would accomplish nothing beyond tarnishing our international standing even further. But I guess that could happen.
As for a 'regieme' change, a la Iraq, we're a little short on soldiers, and I don't see a draft being a very popular option. Even if we could manage to do it with available soldiers, I don't think anyone outside of the president's inner circle, and a few members of congress would come close to supporting it.
Perhaps if the upcoming elections in Iraq are wildly sucessful beyond anyone's craziest dreams, but I wouldn't count on that.
The best part is that my gf likes it. She's definitely a gamer, but she's not much into games like Halo that require you to take the time to learn what every button does before you can play it effectively.
Burnout 3 has a good learning curve if you want to really improve your game, but at the same time, someone who's never even held an xbox controller before can jump right in and have a good time.
The worst part is that since it's all we play when she's over, when she's not here I play other games, and that's allowed her to be better at burnout than I am. I hate losing.
I don't think so. They'll probably wait until the post-convention hype has died down a little bit more, then release some big numbers to get their new computer in the news again. I'd also expect seperate announcements for the ipod shuffle, so that each product can get its own set of media mentions.
Are you kidding, this is the best thing to ever happen to us techies! All I need to do is get my mom and my grandparents to replaces their piece of crap, cheap-ass gateways/dells; and all of a sudden, my family tech support responsibilities will drop by ridiculous amount.
With all the new free time I'll have, I'll need a new hobby. Maybe I'll finally start drinking.
Yeah, you're pretty much spot on. It's part of the growing pains of any new type of media/entertainment, and the attacks come from a few angles.
There's the "When I was your age, I didn't need that" deal, which is more a resistence to change or just a misunderstanding of how/why changes are happening.
It's a more valid complaint, which TV also gets, that video games are both less physical and less social than many other forms of entertainment, and this can lead to people sort of losing touch with reality. Sure, this doesn't happen to everyone, or even to a majority, but it's still a concern. Online gaming is also making video games more social, although at the moment, it's pretty hit or miss.
There's also a valid argument that parents can allow the TV/nintendo to babysit their children too much, and with various negative results appearing in some cases. This is arguably a social problem, not an inherent problem with games, but it's hard to seperate them sometimes.
So why don't books get the same bad rap? They can lead to the same things. I think as games have progressed, they're developing a lot more potential to provide a similar intellectual stimulation that reading can do. But this has take time, and will continue to evolve. Playing pac-man for nine hours a day would make you a better pac-man player, but I don't think it'd do much else for you. While reading for nine hours a day would help you read faster, help your writing and communicating abilities, increase your vocabulary, etc. And if you're reading good stuff, you might learn something.
There are, of course, crap books as well, I'm not sure why they don't take that much flak. Probably because they've been around long enough that people got tired of complaining.
oh hell yeah, I forgot about that. I need search.
Often times when I make a silly little mistake, whatever I'm doing, my first thought is apple-z (I'm a mac guy), but ctrl-z will do. Undo is the single greatest productivity boost I think I've ever seen. If it could be applied to the real world more often, lie would be about a zillion times easier.
The problem with that is that Nintendo makes pretty damn decent hardware. Their decision to neglect online gaming so far seems a bit odd, because the gamecube can take an online adapter. The gamecube is a small, solid piece of equipment, and I don't understand what more you can really ask for from a game console. Oh, and the company has always made money on each system that they've sold. Sounds good to me.
So why can't Nintendo compete in the next round?
What are you talking about? They're not just selling the same thing repeatedly. (Well, some older games are getting ported to their handhelds, but that's different). They're just taking a character(and his related world/universe) and placing him in unsual games, and seeing how it affects gameplay. And a lot of it turns out being pretty darn cool.
I think it's a pretty fascinating way to come up with new gameplay. Mario brings with him a whole bunch of cool stuff. His famous abilities, yoshi, parahnia plants, turtle shells, shyguys, etc... all stuff that doesn't make any sense outside of the mario universe. And then the designers have to find ways to make all of those strange things fit in to a new game type. That's a great way to spur some innovation. And it can be made to work.
So someone might buy Mario Golf, or Mario Tennis, or Super Smash Bros. just because they recognize Mario. Or maybe they want a golf/tennis/or melee type game. Either way. they're still getting a damn fine game, and if you've actually played any of them, you'd know that.