I suppose I can understand mild frustration with this kind of advertising, but looking at it from the other side it's a very reasonable presumption that if you're listening to XM then you're interested in XM stations. It's advertising targeted right at you. Sirius does the same thing on their music stations (those are the ones I get on Dish Network) and it's actually nice to be told that on station [x] they're doing a special two hours of artist [y]. On Sirius, I've also noticed that they don't cross too far in genres when they advertise - for example, if I'm listening to 70s pop (I'm sick that way), I haven't heard commercials for their hardcore rap station...not that I don't enjoy the occasional verse of "Fuck Da Police," but it's hard to justify advertising NWA between Todd Rundgren and The Captain & Tenille.
Maybe I'm too easy-going but this type of commercial is actually valuable to me...like a commercial for an upcoming new crime drama while I'm watching Law & Order.
1) Libel and slander = not crimes (see the difference between civil law and criminal law).
2) Murder is the unlawful taking of a human life while libel and slander are legal terms that essentially come down to saying "mean things" about somebody.
Real-world religious belief is based on compartmentalized self-dishonesty: on repeating a known false belief, but only in those contexts where it doesn't matter. (If so-called "Christians" really believed in their scriptures, they would behave like the defunct Shaker cult, which excludes them from meaningful engagement in normal society).
Translation: "I have no faith, so anyone who does is stupid." Further translation: "I hate Christians."
Slander and libel, at least, are quite free until someone decides to file, and then wins, a lawsuit. I can say that the editorial staff of the New York Times kill kittens just to watch them die. That's at least libelous and probably slanderous, but I'm free as a bird to say it loud and proud until the folks at the NYT sue me and a judgement is entered against me. I'm nitpicking, but I felt an opportunity to talk about someone killing kittens and had to go for it.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go yell "MOVIE!" in a crowded firehouse.
The first controller I used that had more than three buttons (three buttons on the original Genesis controller - A-B-C) was the Genesis six-button controller (expanded from three mainly for fighting games). Making the additional three buttons X-Y-Z made a lot of sense since it gave a clear delineation between the three primary buttons and the three "optional" buttons. So, at least from that point of view, I've come to think of the A-B/X-Y split as "natural," breaking the buttons into two clear sets.
I certainly consider it more intuitive than triangle, circle, square and X (though I've adapted to those, too).:)
Closer to the hearts of/.ers, what about Gene Roddenberry?
Having looked at the member list, I can only conclude that they're not giving TV scifi any respect. I would certainly expect Gene to enter a scifi hall of fame before Spielberg, if for no other reason than Star Trek came out and had an impact long before Spielberg's stuff. It's certainly had more impact on the scifi culture over four decades.
A similar oversight in my view is Irwin Allen. He's created, produced and/or directed quite a bit of popular scifi material, most notably Lost in Space.
Bottom line is that the people are probably folks who are uppity and don't consider TV high enough art (yes, there have been ST movies but the TV was and is homebase for ST).
I didn't see the poster make any of those arguments (and neither did I). He was, in fact, replying to a comment describing George Lucas as being a rapist of childhood memories which is an over-reaction such that anyone who feels that way needs therapy and, perhaps, psychoactive medication. I, on the other hand, was responding to what I considered an unjust response containing a baseless assumption (that the poster liked the current trilogy).
I would note, too, that I hated Episode I. So much so, in fact, that I didn't watch Episode II until it showed up on HBO. Even then, I didn't PLAN to view it - it just happened to be on when I was channel surfing. Apart from one good sequence (thank you, Yoda), THAT movie was such utter crap that I will pursue a similar course with Episode III.
All that being said, though, my childhood memories have somehow remained intact. I'm apparently not so oversensitive that a guy screwing around with his movies retroactively, and making bad new movies, ruins parts of my youth.
It seems to me that determining if there is at least the potential for a causal link SHOULD be easy. Take the last 20 years over which time video games have become more and more popular and then look at childhood violence statistics over that period. If, as has been asserted several times by commenters here (without attribution that I can see, which would help a lot), child violence has gone DOWN over that period of time then it seems obvious that videogaming cannot be a major contributor to this violence. If it's gone up, then it would be valuable to look further into the potential connection with videogames.
With what little I know, all I can see is that the media and shysters like Jack Thompson have blown the idea of videogame-related violence far out of proportion to reality.
Obviously, the posted article is weak, especially in its links, though also for being regurgitated press release material. That being said, this particular article isn't factually incorrect at all. Of course, the link that SHOULD have been used is this one which points at the press release right on Microsoft's own website. (This one provides a similar release for the announcement about Sakaguchi referenced by others' comments.)
While none of the mentioned people are now actually working FOR Microsoft, the fact that they are now being published (and, presumably, at least partially funded) by Microsoft is significant. Smaller developers have only so many resources to devote to projects and the fact that they're developing Xbox Next exclusives is a big deal in that it will be a lot more difficult to simultaneously develop other games for the other various platforms (ask Lionhead about "B.C." and trying to keep too many balls in the air).
So we're now calling backward compatibility a deficiency? Nintendo should have left it out so that they would sell fewer DS units? THAT sounds like a good idea.
It's odd to me that so many videogame geeks consider the release of new products some kind of assault on them, as if suddenly their GBA or Xbox will stop working the day Nintendo puts out DS or Microsoft puts out their new console. In most industries, putting out new products is a GOOD thing.
I, for one, am looking forward to all the new consoles and I certainly hope that there are good games for the lot of them so that I'll be enticed into buying every one. Then again, I have a job...
Gameboy Advance: 2001
Gameboy Advance SP: 2003
Nintendo DS: 2004
A lot more than "a few months" and, again, there was nothing "forcing" an upgrade between the GBA's release and the release of the DS since the SP was only a change in form factor and screen lighting. Even the DS is optional since the GBA/SP is going strong with new releases all the time.
Um, yeah, no. The GBA has exactly TWO flavors: GBA and GBA SP. And, since the SP has no additional gameplay benefits apart from the screen lighting (no big deal if you play the GBA without trouble), it's nowhere close being a forced upgrade situation. It would be like getting all over Nintendo for releasing the Gameboy Pocket whose only advantage over the original Gameboy was a smaller form factor.
It was announced very early on that the DS was NOT meant to be a replacement for the GBA - reading between the lines indicates that it was intended almost solely to be a way for Nintendo to maintain their handheld hegemony in the face of the imminent release of the PSP. That being the case, it should be no surprise to anyone that Nintendo has another handheld in the pipeline. Again, they as much as said so when the DS was announced.
Perspective: $300 over four years is $6.25/month. If that's too much money for you, I can only suggest one thing: Get a friggin' job.
I have all three consoles but this nonsense about Xbox somehow being a bad deal because its time from introduction to new console is too short is ridiculous on its face...not to mention the fact that anybody who bought EITHER the PS2 or the Xbox at launch was a tool of the evil marketing drones. The PS2 launch lineup was a horror and the Xbox had ONE decent game (personally, I'm not a big Halo fan so I wasn't even up for that). At the time of the PS2's release, you could have bought a Dreamcast and a few GOOD games for the same price (or, if you already had the DC, you could have just bought a bunch of good games).
Are you sure they weren't shocked because while you were carefully reading the consent there was a two-foot-high geyser of blood spouting from your belly button?
All folks have to do is take a look at ReplayTV. The company that originally started making the boxes is dust in the wind. But, SonicBlue picked up the ball and has managed to keep the business going, while keeping the pre-existing boxes flush with guide updates.
The thing is, people look at this situation and make some sort of assumption that TiVo will fail and just become nothingness. The truth is that, even if the brand isn't working for the current company, another company (DirecTV, for example, could be a perfect fit) could buy what's left of TiVo and would be able to easily keep the old boxes updated.
These are the type of people who will receive a.rar file, find that they can't open it, Google to find a program that can open it, download one of those programs, install the downloaded program, decompress the.rar file, then run whatever.exe file they find in it. Some people LOVE being infected by viruses and they will go to any lengths to get it done.
Ah, Highlander 2. "The Quickening" wasn't it? A friend and I were getting on the way to go to that movie in my car with a fresh, new brake job. Unfortunately, the idiots did something wrong and the brakes failed as we were going down a large, steep hill. Fortunately, it was an out-of-the-way road and there were few other cars around, but it was still a close call as we reached the intersection at the bottom of the hill and I had to turn into a ditch.
Before you think I don't have a point, we were angry as hell that we missed Highlander 2 that night, being forced to wait for a tow truck and then a ride from my dad. Imagine how angry we were when we actually SAW the movie the next day...
Nope. There are no additional license fees required when buying a VHS tape or DVD for use as a rental copy. In other words, if I buy Kill Bill on DVD for $15, I can then rent it out to my friends for $2 a day if I so choose (what really happens is that people borrow my DVDs for free and then I don't see the movies again for many moons)...
What happened was that back "in the day" VHS movies were produced either to sell or to rent. A more obscure movie, or one that performed very poorly at the box office, would generally cost more per unit because fewer copies were being produced. A bigger movie (ET was the first VHS tape "priced to sell" as I recall) would cost less because the studios counted on being able to sell through. By the end of the era, though, it was pretty rare to have a high-priced VHS tape (over $25) because the costs of production had gone way down and the studios found that there was a market for the sale of any movie if the price was right (one needs only take a look at some of the hideous selections in my parents' VHS library for evidence).
I think I still have a copy of an early 80s catalog of video tapes somewhere in my "archive" (archive meaning a box of junk) featuring Last Tango in Paris on the cover - an example of useless information in my head that I can't get rid of. The prices in that catalog ranged from a minimum of $50 up to over $100 per tape.
The Wired article that makes reference to her hiring of [that jerk] Jack Thompson is almost two years old. The BBC article makes no mention whatsoever of any pending litigation, so I don't know that there are any concerns left in that area for her.
I'll note, too, that forming an organization of the non-profit sort does INDEED call for the services of a lawyer - probably not an A-hole like Thompson but certainly a competent technician who can navigate the treacherous waters of legal paperwork.
One last thing: If I had a kid who committed suicide, you can bet your ass I'd be looking for "something to blame," especially early in the grieving process. If I thought I could find someone in an EQ log telling my child to "just go kill yourself," for example, I'd want to find out. These things are never black and white, but folks grieving for dead loved ones surely want them to be, and it's not necessarily a character flaw to have that desire.
Upon reading the summary, I was all ready to jump all over this mother, but I went crazy and RTFA. The truth is that there's nothing in the article about her wanting to get MMOGs banned, she's not lobbying for warning labels, etc. She simply started a group to hopefully help people who would LIKE to quit playing these games but, for some reason, can't.
Here's what she said in the Wired article about her son's death: "I think a treatment program needs to be set up for this that's just as accessible as Alcoholics Anonymous, because I didn't have anywhere to go for help." Nothing unreasonable about that, to my mind.
I was able to stop playing Everquest easily, though for a few months I was playing it A LOT. I'm also able to avoid alcohol despite drinking to excess on occasion. That doesn't mean that there are no alcoholics, just as it doesn't mean that there are no MMOGaholics for whom the addiction gets out of control.
In short, good for her. Though I think she's probably wrong about the cause of her son's death (he had a bucket of problems according to the Wired article), starting the OGA group is a good thing. She's dealing with her tragedy in a healthy way, probably helping other people along the way. Sounds good to me.
PS- I don't know about her psychology degree assertion in terms of requirements for developing an online game, but they are clearly designed to make their customers want to keep coming back over and over again. As others have pointed out, anything designed for pleasure like this can lead to addiction.
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Maybe I'm too easy-going but this type of commercial is actually valuable to me...like a commercial for an upcoming new crime drama while I'm watching Law & Order.
1) Libel and slander = not crimes (see the difference between civil law and criminal law).
2) Murder is the unlawful taking of a human life while libel and slander are legal terms that essentially come down to saying "mean things" about somebody.
Wow! :)
Translation: "I have no faith, so anyone who does is stupid." Further translation: "I hate Christians."
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go yell "MOVIE!" in a crowded firehouse.
It's also the easiest way to avoid making a compelling single-player game.
I certainly consider it more intuitive than triangle, circle, square and X (though I've adapted to those, too). :)
Having looked at the member list, I can only conclude that they're not giving TV scifi any respect. I would certainly expect Gene to enter a scifi hall of fame before Spielberg, if for no other reason than Star Trek came out and had an impact long before Spielberg's stuff. It's certainly had more impact on the scifi culture over four decades.
A similar oversight in my view is Irwin Allen. He's created, produced and/or directed quite a bit of popular scifi material, most notably Lost in Space.
Bottom line is that the people are probably folks who are uppity and don't consider TV high enough art (yes, there have been ST movies but the TV was and is homebase for ST).
I would note, too, that I hated Episode I. So much so, in fact, that I didn't watch Episode II until it showed up on HBO. Even then, I didn't PLAN to view it - it just happened to be on when I was channel surfing. Apart from one good sequence (thank you, Yoda), THAT movie was such utter crap that I will pursue a similar course with Episode III.
All that being said, though, my childhood memories have somehow remained intact. I'm apparently not so oversensitive that a guy screwing around with his movies retroactively, and making bad new movies, ruins parts of my youth.
PS- Han shot first.
Maybe not, but I'll be they're still itching in general.
With what little I know, all I can see is that the media and shysters like Jack Thompson have blown the idea of videogame-related violence far out of proportion to reality.
While none of the mentioned people are now actually working FOR Microsoft, the fact that they are now being published (and, presumably, at least partially funded) by Microsoft is significant. Smaller developers have only so many resources to devote to projects and the fact that they're developing Xbox Next exclusives is a big deal in that it will be a lot more difficult to simultaneously develop other games for the other various platforms (ask Lionhead about "B.C." and trying to keep too many balls in the air).
To be fair, he was referring to the time period between the release of the DS and the next handheld, the latter of which is what the story was about.
It's odd to me that so many videogame geeks consider the release of new products some kind of assault on them, as if suddenly their GBA or Xbox will stop working the day Nintendo puts out DS or Microsoft puts out their new console. In most industries, putting out new products is a GOOD thing.
I, for one, am looking forward to all the new consoles and I certainly hope that there are good games for the lot of them so that I'll be enticed into buying every one. Then again, I have a job...
Gameboy Advance SP: 2003
Nintendo DS: 2004
A lot more than "a few months" and, again, there was nothing "forcing" an upgrade between the GBA's release and the release of the DS since the SP was only a change in form factor and screen lighting. Even the DS is optional since the GBA/SP is going strong with new releases all the time.
Um, yeah, no. The GBA has exactly TWO flavors: GBA and GBA SP. And, since the SP has no additional gameplay benefits apart from the screen lighting (no big deal if you play the GBA without trouble), it's nowhere close being a forced upgrade situation. It would be like getting all over Nintendo for releasing the Gameboy Pocket whose only advantage over the original Gameboy was a smaller form factor.
It was announced very early on that the DS was NOT meant to be a replacement for the GBA - reading between the lines indicates that it was intended almost solely to be a way for Nintendo to maintain their handheld hegemony in the face of the imminent release of the PSP. That being the case, it should be no surprise to anyone that Nintendo has another handheld in the pipeline. Again, they as much as said so when the DS was announced.
I have all three consoles but this nonsense about Xbox somehow being a bad deal because its time from introduction to new console is too short is ridiculous on its face...not to mention the fact that anybody who bought EITHER the PS2 or the Xbox at launch was a tool of the evil marketing drones. The PS2 launch lineup was a horror and the Xbox had ONE decent game (personally, I'm not a big Halo fan so I wasn't even up for that). At the time of the PS2's release, you could have bought a Dreamcast and a few GOOD games for the same price (or, if you already had the DC, you could have just bought a bunch of good games).
Are you sure they weren't shocked because while you were carefully reading the consent there was a two-foot-high geyser of blood spouting from your belly button?
The thing is, people look at this situation and make some sort of assumption that TiVo will fail and just become nothingness. The truth is that, even if the brand isn't working for the current company, another company (DirecTV, for example, could be a perfect fit) could buy what's left of TiVo and would be able to easily keep the old boxes updated.
These are the type of people who will receive a .rar file, find that they can't open it, Google to find a program that can open it, download one of those programs, install the downloaded program, decompress the .rar file, then run whatever .exe file they find in it. Some people LOVE being infected by viruses and they will go to any lengths to get it done.
Before you think I don't have a point, we were angry as hell that we missed Highlander 2 that night, being forced to wait for a tow truck and then a ride from my dad. Imagine how angry we were when we actually SAW the movie the next day...
What happened was that back "in the day" VHS movies were produced either to sell or to rent. A more obscure movie, or one that performed very poorly at the box office, would generally cost more per unit because fewer copies were being produced. A bigger movie (ET was the first VHS tape "priced to sell" as I recall) would cost less because the studios counted on being able to sell through. By the end of the era, though, it was pretty rare to have a high-priced VHS tape (over $25) because the costs of production had gone way down and the studios found that there was a market for the sale of any movie if the price was right (one needs only take a look at some of the hideous selections in my parents' VHS library for evidence).
I think I still have a copy of an early 80s catalog of video tapes somewhere in my "archive" (archive meaning a box of junk) featuring Last Tango in Paris on the cover - an example of useless information in my head that I can't get rid of. The prices in that catalog ranged from a minimum of $50 up to over $100 per tape.
I'll note, too, that forming an organization of the non-profit sort does INDEED call for the services of a lawyer - probably not an A-hole like Thompson but certainly a competent technician who can navigate the treacherous waters of legal paperwork.
One last thing: If I had a kid who committed suicide, you can bet your ass I'd be looking for "something to blame," especially early in the grieving process. If I thought I could find someone in an EQ log telling my child to "just go kill yourself," for example, I'd want to find out. These things are never black and white, but folks grieving for dead loved ones surely want them to be, and it's not necessarily a character flaw to have that desire.
Here's what she said in the Wired article about her son's death: "I think a treatment program needs to be set up for this that's just as accessible as Alcoholics Anonymous, because I didn't have anywhere to go for help." Nothing unreasonable about that, to my mind.
I was able to stop playing Everquest easily, though for a few months I was playing it A LOT. I'm also able to avoid alcohol despite drinking to excess on occasion. That doesn't mean that there are no alcoholics, just as it doesn't mean that there are no MMOGaholics for whom the addiction gets out of control.
In short, good for her. Though I think she's probably wrong about the cause of her son's death (he had a bucket of problems according to the Wired article), starting the OGA group is a good thing. She's dealing with her tragedy in a healthy way, probably helping other people along the way. Sounds good to me.
PS- I don't know about her psychology degree assertion in terms of requirements for developing an online game, but they are clearly designed to make their customers want to keep coming back over and over again. As others have pointed out, anything designed for pleasure like this can lead to addiction.