I think you're mistaking a "plot device" for a "joke." If nobody in the show got the irony then there would be some basis for calling that a joke. Since most of them do, it's not.
I've only seen one of the new cartoons on the TNN Thursday, and that's "Gary The Rat." Stan Lee has been a hack since almost before I was BORN [1972], and combining him with Pamela "Social Disease" Anderson doesn't do anything for me; Ren & Stimpy was over years ago.
Anyway, I watched the first episode and I didn't laugh once. I've been a Kelsey Grammer fan for a long, long time but I found his performance just as wooden and painful to listen to as everyone else's in that episode. The story and script were just dreck (concept great, execution pitiful - see "Enterprise"). The only redeeming quality was the art style which I thought was excellent.
Usually, I give new shows three or four episodes (my time permitting) to get a head of steam but I didn't even see potential in Gary The Rat.
If this is where "cartoons for adults" are heading they're going to go away again, sooner rather than later.
You're right about the Xbox Live changes to the dashboard, and there are more coming with Xbox Live "2.0" that's been announced. Then, you've got their music visualization/media player program (Music Mixer) which is very likely going to make some changes to the dashboard.
Of course, even beyond all that is the fact that every time you activate a connection to Xbox Live, it checks the XBL software and updates it if there have been any changes. It would be a trivial matter for them to use this feature to either incorporate a check to detect/disable the hack and/or implement a security fix to do the same even if the hack isn't already in use.
The moral of the story? Probably not a good idea to use Xbox Live if you intend on using this particular exploit.
The secondary moral? Microsoft really was thinking ahead when they decided to go with their own closed service for "all" (quotes added to acknowledge XBConnect, Gamespy Tunnel and the rest which use the system link functionality to get people hooked up over the net) online games.
I'd identify a lot more with the guy quoted if he was making an effort to design his modchip so that it CAN'T play pirated games while still retaining the ability to boot Linux and play import games, something I'm sure is possible. As it is, the only reason he's thumping his chest and thumbing his nose at Microsoft is because he has the [probably reasonable] belief that Microsoft can't touch him while he's protected by Australian law. That earns him no more respect from me than would a punk calling me names on the street while hiding behind his buddy, Mike Tyson.
Then let me clarify further. Anyone who spends $400-500 on a video card in order to play three games is beyond dumb. To make it more inclusive, I should really just say that anyone who spends $400-500 on a video card to play video games is beyond dumb and just leave it that.
PS- I'm beyond dumb because I've spent around $750 in console hardware in order to play video games despite the fact that $200 (for an Xbox) would have taken care of the problem.:)
But it looked pretty damn close in most of the benchmarks.
Pretty damn close doesn't seem to cut it if you're going to pay $100 more. Pretty damn close would be reasonable if the two cards were the same price, but the fact is that overall the 9800 outperformed the 5900 with half the memory and 80% of the cost. The way those benchmarks came out, I don't think I could understand anyone picking up the 5900.
Right on. Frankly, I would consider a Linux-only user who spent $400-500 on a graphics card beyond dumb unless perhaps they're making games themselves. At that price, it's more than worth it (ignoring the political aspect) to pick up Windows XP so that you can play all the "hot, new" games that these cards will enhance.
I think the "hands down" part is in reference to the fact that on the UT2003 testing the 9800 can go to 6xAA and 16xAF and still beat the Nvidia in frame rates while the 5900 is at 8x8x and 4xS/8x (I don't know what the "S" refers to - some Nvidia-specific enhancement I assume).
I don't know if it's "a good thing" (TM Martha Stewart) or not. I'm by no means qualified to make that determination. In fact, unlike the person who submitted this I didn't find the article to have any compelling arguments at all. The only argument I could find was essentially "JK Rawling has made so much money that she shouldn't mind if someone else writes Harry Potter books without her permission" - a sentiment that I, as a US capitalist, have a hard time getting behind.
I, for one, wouldn't trust such systems. I, and I alone, will be the judge of what games my kids play.
So you're going to play every game your child is interested in all the way through before permitting them to see it? Or are you simply going to give them only hand-me-down games that you've already played? One way you're wasting hours upon hours of time and the other you're restricting your child to having exactly the same taste in games that you do. Good stuff, indeed.
I don't agree at all. I think that the ESRB ratings give parents an opportunity to get a snapshot preview of what could be objectionable content in the video game. If you look at teen-heavy message boards such as the ones at GameFAQs you'll see a lot of kids asking how they can convince their parents to buy them particular M-rated video games. As a non-scientific sampling of kids who might have even more freedom than others (they're allowed to post messages on the Internet, presumably unsupervised), I think it probably means that more parents are paying attention to ESRB ratings than we think.
Personally, I think the changes in terms of making the ratings more prominent are a good thing in that they don't have any negative impact on me, or the games I play, but at the very least can have a positive impact in terms of keeping some of the more shrill reactionaries (like Lieberman) quiet.
Does the first ammendment give you the right to sell?
Depending on the context, the answer is a qualified "yes." The main qualification in the US is that we have laws restricting the sales of pornographic materials to minors. If the government (such as in the recent St. Louis case) places restrictions on sales of an entertainment product because of content, it can indeed be considered a first amendment issue and dealt with as such by the courts.
The reason National Lampoon (Mad, Crazy, etc.) can get away with what they do is because their work is parody which is a special exception included in copyright law and doesn't have to be considered under the original poster's court guidelines...in other words, any attempt to sue National Lampoon for one of their comedy bits on the basis of copyright infringement would be thrown out of court before any judging has to be done.
Although it wasn't stated implicitly in the article, I'd imagine that the author could easily have READ some of the books in question (or at least excerpts). Have you done the same?
I certainly wouldn't find a version of The Brothers Karamazov set in modern America to have "innate quality and indeed superiority" over the original just because it's no longer set in 19th century Russia.
That's not at all the point the author is making, though you're right about parodies/satire being permitted as "fair use" under US copyright law.
The article isn't an argument to apply carefully current copyright law (which allows satire, use of excerpts in criticism, etc.). Rather, it's an argument that copyright laws are not being used to protect the rights of an author to profit from their own work but instead are diminishing the ability of others to make new product that might be loosely, or even directly, based on the original work. While this might sound like the author doesn't like copyright at all, rather she seems to be saying that copyright should be more literal and only prevent TRUE copying of material. In her example, she's advocating the ability to publish a book where Harry Potter meets Gandalf while still being against someone simply selling bootleg versions of "Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone."
It's simple why the minigames are taking off: video games have become more accepted among the adult population. (Just ask my Dr. Mario addict mother.) But that adult population generally doesn't have time to get truly involved in a game- so the simple-but-still fun games, so perfect for coffee breaks, are getting played because that's what people have time for.
I think for many it's less a question of time and more one of inclination.
For example, I'm 31 years old and cut my gaming teeth on the Atari 2600. Most of the games on that machine were simple, like the ones on cell phones. Over time, as systems advanced and I aged with them, games became more and more complex in gameplay [if not themes]. For adults who never got into videogaming while it was still for kids and "gamers," it's a lot harder to jump in and try out the hottest new games for the current consoles. There are not only more buttons (remember when we just had one?) but the designs of many modern games make assumptions about fundamental gaming skills that only a well-designed tutorial mode can overcome. These assumptions are either true in the case of long-time gamers or undaunting to a young person who still assumes that s/he can learn and be good at anything, including any video game.
A perfect example of this is Neverwinter Nights. I can't imagine someone unfamiliar with RPGs trying to sit down and play that game without reading the manual at least a couple times and probably referring to it constantly while trying to play. On the other hand, people with RPG experience can [just about always] play it right out of the box and really only need to refer to the manual for specific character attributes/skills. While someone might indeed be interested in sitting down and playing NWN for an hour or two a couple times a week, the learning curve is such that busy non-gamers would probably quit rather quickly because their first 10 or more sessions would be spent just trying to get a handle on how to play the game.
Pac-Man, on the other hand, is understood easily within the first five minutes of play.
My mother, too, is a puzzle fan. I bought her a Gameboy way back in the day so that she could try Tetris. She loved it and I've been replacing/upgrading her Nintendo handheld ever since. She likes Dr. Mario, Columns Crown and the like but even Chu Chu Rocket is presenting her with some difficulty because it takes a little more time to learn and gain skill. On the Atari 2600, my grandmother liked to play...but only Casino because, again, the learning curve was small since she already knew about card games.
I'm rambling now, so on to what I think might be my point: As the population that has been playing videogames for years continues to age, there will actually be a decline in the popularity of the more simple games. I think they're experiencing a surge now due simply to the fact that such a large percentage of the population has access to PCs and cell phones where playing videogames for most is a by-product of having equipment that is by and large being used for other purposes. In 20 years, I can envision nearly everyone waiting in an airport terminal playing the future equivalent of a Gameboy and playing all kinds of complex videogames due simply to the fact that those people will be more likely to have grown up with videogames...whether or not that's a good thing is another issue entirely.:)
The difference here is that each copy you give to someone will require buying a DVD-R/RW disc (making this more akin to VCR-style sharing which has already passed the court test) while the ReplayTV show-sharing option didn't require any physical intervention whatsoever and the only thing standing in the way of giving shows away to everyone who wanted them was Internet bandwidth. The ReplayTV show-sharing function was, for all intents and purposes, the same as Kazaa, Gnutella and all the other peer-to-peer PC file sharing programs - the peers were simply task-specific devices (PVRs) instead of general purpose devices (PCs)
They don't "need" to have editing options to cut out commercials on the DVDs. VCRs have been quite successful for some time without them. Frankly, the only people THAT concerned about not having commercials on shows they save are the super geeks. Most people are perfectly content with the ability to fast (really fast in the case of PVR and DVD recordings) forward through them.
Heck, my mom has, through my good graces, had a PVR for quite some time and there are still times when she doesn't even bother skipping commercials...me, I get a crawling itch when I can't skip commercials but I'm one of the aforementioned "super geeks" - of course, I'm also lazy (too lazy to process shows through the computer and then burn them commercial-free) so I just buy DVD collections whenever possible.
Throwing a DVD burner into the mix is a great step-up, but only if there is some way to edit the program before burning it... I don't want to have a copy for 50 years on DVD that starts with the end of the program before it, has commercial breaks in the middle, etc. It wouldn't take much work to give editing functionality (even if edited content must be burned to DVD and can't be watched from the hard drive, I can live with that.)
Part of the reason that PVRs like Tivo and ReplayTV still exist (though Replay has been sued, encouraging them to remove some features) is that they DON'T edit the originally broadcasted content. Providing easy-to-use editing features in a box like this - particularly in reference to commercials - will ensure litigation and will make it more likely that said litigation will be successful.
This is of even greater concern to content producers since more and more television shows are being released in pre-recorded DVD sets and being able to easily make commercial-free DVDs of TV shows at home would cut into that market.
Xbox Live sold more than 200,000 units in its first 2-3 months of availability (and beat out the PS2 network adapter during the same time period, despite the fact that the PS2 adapter has both dial-up and broadband compatibility). By definition, it can't be a "dud."
Goblin Commander certainly looks interesting to me. If it makes it's current speculated date, it'll be out by the end of the year or the beginning of the next.
Only the problem is that consoles are even more difficult to get online than PC's are.
Not true at all. My getting online with the Xbox and the PS2 (not willing to buy a $30-40 adaptor to play one online GC game) took exactly these steps:
1) Run Ethernet cable from router to console(s).
2) Insert setup disc.
3) Tell it to use automatic setup.
4) Fill in demographic info (and credit card info with Xbox Live).
5) Done.
With the PC (Windows - I'm a gamer), the first time I set up DSL, I had to:
1) Order DSL (insert two-month wait) from phone company.
2) Order service from ISP (didn't want to use the phone company).
3) Install network card.
4) Install network card drivers.
5) Plug in DSL "modem."
6) Open network neighborhood and configure network settings (this could be multiple steps compared to the auto config on PS2 and Xbox).
7) Restart computer, hopefully done.
The only part of console setup that even comes close to difficult is setting up a router (you don't have to) or running Ethernet cable if the console is in a distant room (no different than setting up another computer somewhere else in the house). With router setup, if you pick up any of the consumer cable/DSL routers the setup is fully laid out, and unless you have some "weird" type of broadband (AOL, I'm looking it you) installing will probably be a snap.
In short, setting a console up for use with the Internet is no harder - and usually much EASIER - than setting up a computer. This is partly because most folks wanting to game online already have Internet connections and PCs, and partly because the software included with the consoles is pretty smart and very streamlined.
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I think you're mistaking a "plot device" for a "joke." If nobody in the show got the irony then there would be some basis for calling that a joke. Since most of them do, it's not.
Anyway, I watched the first episode and I didn't laugh once. I've been a Kelsey Grammer fan for a long, long time but I found his performance just as wooden and painful to listen to as everyone else's in that episode. The story and script were just dreck (concept great, execution pitiful - see "Enterprise"). The only redeeming quality was the art style which I thought was excellent.
Usually, I give new shows three or four episodes (my time permitting) to get a head of steam but I didn't even see potential in Gary The Rat.
If this is where "cartoons for adults" are heading they're going to go away again, sooner rather than later.
Of course, even beyond all that is the fact that every time you activate a connection to Xbox Live, it checks the XBL software and updates it if there have been any changes. It would be a trivial matter for them to use this feature to either incorporate a check to detect/disable the hack and /or implement a security fix to do the same even if the hack isn't already in use.
The moral of the story? Probably not a good idea to use Xbox Live if you intend on using this particular exploit.
The secondary moral? Microsoft really was thinking ahead when they decided to go with their own closed service for "all" (quotes added to acknowledge XBConnect, Gamespy Tunnel and the rest which use the system link functionality to get people hooked up over the net) online games.
I'd identify a lot more with the guy quoted if he was making an effort to design his modchip so that it CAN'T play pirated games while still retaining the ability to boot Linux and play import games, something I'm sure is possible. As it is, the only reason he's thumping his chest and thumbing his nose at Microsoft is because he has the [probably reasonable] belief that Microsoft can't touch him while he's protected by Australian law. That earns him no more respect from me than would a punk calling me names on the street while hiding behind his buddy, Mike Tyson.
PS- I'm beyond dumb because I've spent around $750 in console hardware in order to play video games despite the fact that $200 (for an Xbox) would have taken care of the problem. :)
Pretty damn close doesn't seem to cut it if you're going to pay $100 more. Pretty damn close would be reasonable if the two cards were the same price, but the fact is that overall the 9800 outperformed the 5900 with half the memory and 80% of the cost. The way those benchmarks came out, I don't think I could understand anyone picking up the 5900.
Right on. Frankly, I would consider a Linux-only user who spent $400-500 on a graphics card beyond dumb unless perhaps they're making games themselves. At that price, it's more than worth it (ignoring the political aspect) to pick up Windows XP so that you can play all the "hot, new" games that these cards will enhance.
I think the "hands down" part is in reference to the fact that on the UT2003 testing the 9800 can go to 6xAA and 16xAF and still beat the Nvidia in frame rates while the 5900 is at 8x8x and 4xS/8x (I don't know what the "S" refers to - some Nvidia-specific enhancement I assume).
I don't know if it's "a good thing" (TM Martha Stewart) or not. I'm by no means qualified to make that determination. In fact, unlike the person who submitted this I didn't find the article to have any compelling arguments at all. The only argument I could find was essentially "JK Rawling has made so much money that she shouldn't mind if someone else writes Harry Potter books without her permission" - a sentiment that I, as a US capitalist, have a hard time getting behind.
So you're going to play every game your child is interested in all the way through before permitting them to see it? Or are you simply going to give them only hand-me-down games that you've already played? One way you're wasting hours upon hours of time and the other you're restricting your child to having exactly the same taste in games that you do. Good stuff, indeed.
Personally, I think the changes in terms of making the ratings more prominent are a good thing in that they don't have any negative impact on me, or the games I play, but at the very least can have a positive impact in terms of keeping some of the more shrill reactionaries (like Lieberman) quiet.
Depending on the context, the answer is a qualified "yes." The main qualification in the US is that we have laws restricting the sales of pornographic materials to minors. If the government (such as in the recent St. Louis case) places restrictions on sales of an entertainment product because of content, it can indeed be considered a first amendment issue and dealt with as such by the courts.
The reason National Lampoon (Mad, Crazy, etc.) can get away with what they do is because their work is parody which is a special exception included in copyright law and doesn't have to be considered under the original poster's court guidelines...in other words, any attempt to sue National Lampoon for one of their comedy bits on the basis of copyright infringement would be thrown out of court before any judging has to be done.
I certainly wouldn't find a version of The Brothers Karamazov set in modern America to have "innate quality and indeed superiority" over the original just because it's no longer set in 19th century Russia.
The article isn't an argument to apply carefully current copyright law (which allows satire, use of excerpts in criticism, etc.). Rather, it's an argument that copyright laws are not being used to protect the rights of an author to profit from their own work but instead are diminishing the ability of others to make new product that might be loosely, or even directly, based on the original work. While this might sound like the author doesn't like copyright at all, rather she seems to be saying that copyright should be more literal and only prevent TRUE copying of material. In her example, she's advocating the ability to publish a book where Harry Potter meets Gandalf while still being against someone simply selling bootleg versions of "Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone."
Sounds like SOMEbody needs a hug! {{{{{AC}}}}}
You're BOTH high! The way to REALLY be cool is to get into gang wars over which console is the best!
I think for many it's less a question of time and more one of inclination.
For example, I'm 31 years old and cut my gaming teeth on the Atari 2600. Most of the games on that machine were simple, like the ones on cell phones. Over time, as systems advanced and I aged with them, games became more and more complex in gameplay [if not themes]. For adults who never got into videogaming while it was still for kids and "gamers," it's a lot harder to jump in and try out the hottest new games for the current consoles. There are not only more buttons (remember when we just had one?) but the designs of many modern games make assumptions about fundamental gaming skills that only a well-designed tutorial mode can overcome. These assumptions are either true in the case of long-time gamers or undaunting to a young person who still assumes that s/he can learn and be good at anything, including any video game.
A perfect example of this is Neverwinter Nights. I can't imagine someone unfamiliar with RPGs trying to sit down and play that game without reading the manual at least a couple times and probably referring to it constantly while trying to play. On the other hand, people with RPG experience can [just about always] play it right out of the box and really only need to refer to the manual for specific character attributes/skills. While someone might indeed be interested in sitting down and playing NWN for an hour or two a couple times a week, the learning curve is such that busy non-gamers would probably quit rather quickly because their first 10 or more sessions would be spent just trying to get a handle on how to play the game.
Pac-Man, on the other hand, is understood easily within the first five minutes of play.
My mother, too, is a puzzle fan. I bought her a Gameboy way back in the day so that she could try Tetris. She loved it and I've been replacing/upgrading her Nintendo handheld ever since. She likes Dr. Mario, Columns Crown and the like but even Chu Chu Rocket is presenting her with some difficulty because it takes a little more time to learn and gain skill. On the Atari 2600, my grandmother liked to play...but only Casino because, again, the learning curve was small since she already knew about card games.
I'm rambling now, so on to what I think might be my point: As the population that has been playing videogames for years continues to age, there will actually be a decline in the popularity of the more simple games. I think they're experiencing a surge now due simply to the fact that such a large percentage of the population has access to PCs and cell phones where playing videogames for most is a by-product of having equipment that is by and large being used for other purposes. In 20 years, I can envision nearly everyone waiting in an airport terminal playing the future equivalent of a Gameboy and playing all kinds of complex videogames due simply to the fact that those people will be more likely to have grown up with videogames...whether or not that's a good thing is another issue entirely. :)
The difference here is that each copy you give to someone will require buying a DVD-R/RW disc (making this more akin to VCR-style sharing which has already passed the court test) while the ReplayTV show-sharing option didn't require any physical intervention whatsoever and the only thing standing in the way of giving shows away to everyone who wanted them was Internet bandwidth. The ReplayTV show-sharing function was, for all intents and purposes, the same as Kazaa, Gnutella and all the other peer-to-peer PC file sharing programs - the peers were simply task-specific devices (PVRs) instead of general purpose devices (PCs)
Heck, my mom has, through my good graces, had a PVR for quite some time and there are still times when she doesn't even bother skipping commercials...me, I get a crawling itch when I can't skip commercials but I'm one of the aforementioned "super geeks" - of course, I'm also lazy (too lazy to process shows through the computer and then burn them commercial-free) so I just buy DVD collections whenever possible.
Part of the reason that PVRs like Tivo and ReplayTV still exist (though Replay has been sued, encouraging them to remove some features) is that they DON'T edit the originally broadcasted content. Providing easy-to-use editing features in a box like this - particularly in reference to commercials - will ensure litigation and will make it more likely that said litigation will be successful.
This is of even greater concern to content producers since more and more television shows are being released in pre-recorded DVD sets and being able to easily make commercial-free DVDs of TV shows at home would cut into that market.
Xbox Live sold more than 200,000 units in its first 2-3 months of availability (and beat out the PS2 network adapter during the same time period, despite the fact that the PS2 adapter has both dial-up and broadband compatibility). By definition, it can't be a "dud."
Goblin Commander certainly looks interesting to me. If it makes it's current speculated date, it'll be out by the end of the year or the beginning of the next.
Not true at all. My getting online with the Xbox and the PS2 (not willing to buy a $30-40 adaptor to play one online GC game) took exactly these steps:
1) Run Ethernet cable from router to console(s).
2) Insert setup disc.
3) Tell it to use automatic setup.
4) Fill in demographic info (and credit card info with Xbox Live). 5) Done.
With the PC (Windows - I'm a gamer), the first time I set up DSL, I had to:
1) Order DSL (insert two-month wait) from phone company.
2) Order service from ISP (didn't want to use the phone company).
3) Install network card.
4) Install network card drivers.
5) Plug in DSL "modem."
6) Open network neighborhood and configure network settings (this could be multiple steps compared to the auto config on PS2 and Xbox).
7) Restart computer, hopefully done.
The only part of console setup that even comes close to difficult is setting up a router (you don't have to) or running Ethernet cable if the console is in a distant room (no different than setting up another computer somewhere else in the house). With router setup, if you pick up any of the consumer cable/DSL routers the setup is fully laid out, and unless you have some "weird" type of broadband (AOL, I'm looking it you) installing will probably be a snap.
In short, setting a console up for use with the Internet is no harder - and usually much EASIER - than setting up a computer. This is partly because most folks wanting to game online already have Internet connections and PCs, and partly because the software included with the consoles is pretty smart and very streamlined.
Don't forget the bonus round where you hunt "abortion doctors" with a sniper rifle.