I was involved in a fairly serious motor-vehicle accident last October. On the freeway, at freeway speeds, with airbag deployment involved.
I and the driver of the other vehicle were taken to the hospital in an ambulance ('just to be sure' because of airbag deployment, despite strong evidence that my only injury was to my ankle -- nothing wrong with taking care in these cases).
I arrived at the ER, was looked at for perhaps 90 seconds by a doctor (no, not much of an exaggeration if any here) and they declared I had a sprain and that was that. I was stuck in a corner, eventually an orderly brought me an ACE bandage, and I limped out (not even given crutches, yay!) and met my roommate who was picking me up.
I don't know what the charge for the ambulance ride was, but I do know that the bill for the hospital was $2,400.
Not one X-ray, no lab work at all, just 90 seconds of a doctor declaring I simply had a sprain.
(For the record, I had more than a sprain; there was in fact a bone chip which is still causing me difficulty and hopefully will be removed surgically soon.)
So, yeah. Health care billing is about sixteen different kinds of jacked up.
I must agree here: Eternal Darkness was (until Skies of Arcadia got ported over, and then Tales of Symphonia showed up) the main reason I even kept a GameCube around.
Yes, Eternal Darkness showed plainly it's roots as a Nintendo 64 game that shifted platforms, but the underlying gameplay conceits and design held up. The story was interesting, the gameplay worked (for me, at least), and above all: it remained fun.
That said, I played the Too Human demo last night, and all I can say is that even if it isn't the most amazing game I've ever seen, I'm still considering purchasing it.
The limited taste of gameplay was enjoyable. The game's overall pay is not unfairly compared to Diablo (kill hordes of enemies, gain XP and pseudo-random loot), with an 'innovative' (or just 'different', if you prefer) interface.
I think where Too Human falls short in reviews is that over the (lengthy!) development cycle, it's been made out to the public like this is going to be ushering in a new era of epic gameplay and story. Gameplay is some old elements and some new ones, but what I saw of the story was a cut above a lot of the crap I've seen out there, but certainly it didn't seem to come across as well as the story (and the storytelling) in Call of Duty 4 or Mass Effect.
You are correct, but I was talking about dying. It's also possible to survive grenades, V2's, missiles, etc. as long as they don't perforate you in the wrong places.
We were discussing the ethics of killing someone 'before they know what hit them.'
-b I know exactly what you were saying here, but I couldn't help the momentary and instantaneous thought: Just where are the right places to be perforated, anyhow?
While the cost-over-time is certainly much greater than all my 'play-once' games (even speaking as someone who bought Steel Batallion for the Xbox and the 'Legendary Edition' of Halo 3), there's a distressing number of games that never drop to $1/hr over time played. And this even includes games rented for $5.
If I buy a game that's 40 hours long and I paid $60 for it, I still get more 'value per dollar', in theory out of WoW.
That said, WoW isn't 'like other games', in that the social aspect (playing with cool people, chatting and such, not just smashing monsters in the face) is a big part of it. I'd rather spend $15 a month plus the initial $50 and the occasional (what, every 2 years?) additional 40-50 for expansions on a social game like WoW that I also enjoy as a game than the stream of games I've bought for $60 that I played for 20 or fewer hours over the course of a couple weeks and never touched again.
(Not that it'll stop me - I like many different kinds of games, including those played with no electronic assistance more involved than an incandescent or compact-flourescent lightbulb.)
Starbucks is nearly ubiquitous here in the US (and in other places) and is fairly consistent in what you get, regardless of location. This helps (look at McDonald's - I doubt there are many people who can't find a much tastier hamburger nearby, and yet they're quite successful).
Also, it isn't coffee. They make hot milkshakes. And if you find the (rare) location with a staff that actually cares, they can make halfway decent coffee.
Should there have been antitrust lawsuits against Creative when there was no way to get my (quite shitty, frankly) Rio to accept music except through their ludicrous software? Or what about Sony and their ATRAC monstrosities? Use any music you want as long as you convert it to ATRAC!
Where do we draw the line at letting hardware companies support what they want? Or should every new device support every imaginable format?
Because I'd like to point out that you can use an iPod without ever buying a single song from the iTunes store, even if you purchase your music online. MP3 support - it's not like that's some trivial, little-known fringe file-format.
Sure you have to use iTunes to move music onto the iPod. And I have to use proprietary, provided software from the manufacturer to work with a number of various hardware products and peripherals. I don't see the big deal, frankly.
This was mentioned somewhere (but I am too lazy to dig up a ling - [citation needed], whee). This is done to ensure backwards compatibility with original Xbox titles (such as Crimson Skies and Halo 1/2, I imagine), where apparently a friends list that exceeds 100 breaks things.
That said, the guy who mentioned this limitation and it's reason (a Microsoft guy) also mentioned that it bothers him since his friends list is full.
I don't entirely disagree, but - every situation is different. I'm certainly not going an hour each way to flip burgers, I assure you. I have an interesting job. And in my particular case the travel time is a cost I've chosen to assume (I could get an apartment probably ten minutes from work, but it would cost near what I'm paying now and likely be a far, far less desirable overall situation, since through pure good fortune, I've gotten a ludicrously good deal on living arrangements).
One of the big problems in a sprawled multi-metro area (San Jose/San Francisco/Oakland, the greater SF Bay Area, is a perfect example of this, alas) is that we have: BART - Elevated/sub-surface commuter trains CalTrain - Steel wheels, along a corridor between San Francisco and San Jose VTA - Santa Clara County's public transit agency; lots of buses, some pretty decent light rail AC Transit - San Mateo and the East Bay (not 100% sure on their whole area) public transit agency, more buses here. MUNI - San Francisco's public transit (buses, etc)
Not all of these interoperate perfectly. To get from parts of San Jose to Oakland it could be as 'simple' as: VTA light rail to a VTA express bus to a BART station - and I'm assuming you live along one of the light rail lines, or near enough, and don't need a bus to get there.
The sprawl isn't a purely geographical, distance-related problem, it's a political one. Leaving aside industry lobbying from automakers, airlines and the Gnomes of Zurich, you still have each locality having their say (San Mateo's infamous desire to -not- have BART run through town so they wouldn't become San Francisco's bedroom community... that worked pretty well...)
While I love my car and often enjoy driving, I would be more than happy to fork over a couple hundred bucks a month (I can currently easily spend $80 a week just on gasoline if I do a fair amount of non-work driving, like going anywhere on the weekends) for a mass transit pass and spend my hour (or even hour and a half) on the train (or whatever) instead of behind the wheel. I'd happily bust out the laptop and wireless broadband card and just work or read/. or whatever.
Unfortunately we're too balkanized on the issue ('we' being the general population of the US) to pull together a good solution on our own.
Everyone take the bus! Now there's a realistic solution to the energy problem.
I'm sorry, but is that sarcasm I detect? Because I really don't see the problem here. Plenty of countries run primarily on mass transport and non-ICE vehicles (you know, 'bikes' and 'walking'). What actually necessitates a car? What necessitates a car? Living 40 miles from your job and not being on the (one) train route, near the (limited) light rail, and having to cross two counties' bus systems. I can drive my Toyota that get 30ish MPG (and hey, I'll be car pooling in a couple of weeks, too, when my schedule changes), or I can spend about three hours each way to use mass transit at a very minimal financial gain (and a net loss, given the time).
The US is unlike most of Europe and a lot of Asia in a lot of ways, and not the least of it is cities that grew up with the automobile. For good or ill, working within walking distance of one's home (or even where you can use mass transit) isn't always an option. Things are far too spread out. Around 2001 I worked a relatively short 15 or so miles from my home (I did eventually move much closer). The 20 minutes of driving it took to get to and from work would have been replaced with almost two hours each way to use mass transit.
That's because we don't have businesses and residential areas densely packed enough outside of actual cities (in other words, in our massive suburban sprawl, like most of the San Francisco Bay Area) to make mass transit a viable option for everyone (or even for half of everyone) the way the New York City subway works out.
The United States is just not built for optimal efficiency of mass transit, and there are a lot of reasons this is so.
That is what makes a car necessary (for some/many people - but not for everyone: I know people who live and work in the SF Bay Area without owning a car).
No - no save games (that I'm aware of). But it has internal flash specifically for holding config info. It requires a memory unit (because, you know, it's MS so it's not a memory -card-) or a hard disk to save games. And games will prompt you to select a device to save or load from if you've got a hard disk and a memory unit both attached, but make no references to any other storage devices.
Not a lot (for saving games/profiles, for example) but plenty enough to save configuration information. Wireless network setup and so on (and so, thus, I would imagine would be parental controls info) are kept just fine when swapping hard drives, while there's no memory card in any of the slots.
I've seen/done this myself (swapping hard drives, etc). I have no idea of the precise quantity and nature of the storage that's used, but it's certainly some form of flash or flash-like storage.
I used to work for EA. They're the Microsoft of games. No shock there to anyone. However: They aren't as assimilation prone as they once were. Digital Illusions (DICE) did quite well when EA ate them. Maxis still did some decent things, still.
Westwood not so much.
On the other hand, it's entirely possible that with a group like BioWare, the scenario will be closer to what happened with Bungie: More money to spend on production, wider distribution (not that that's a real problem, honestly, for BioWare) and greater success for the IP they're working on (Halo for Bungie, Mass Effect for BioWare).
Pandemic has had less spectacular successes than BioWare, but I have liked a lot of their work. While my gut reaction is 'Oh, fuck!', I still (perhaps quite naively) hold out a smidge of hope that things might not be as bad as I tend to think they will be.
Since the Expos are now the Nationals, I guess they figured that was a pretty safe bet, what with the way the Toronto Blue Jays are(n't) tearing things up, of late. Seems like a safe bet, sadly.
Aside from most stores (EBGames/GameStop/etc and WalMart probably make up the lion's share of retail sales, so ditching them is a bad idea) not being willing to carry AO titles, the console manufacturers won't approve a title that's AO. That means you they won't license you the necessary software for that title so that it'll run - the copy-protection and authentication stuff.
You might have these things handy anyhow, but - two factors are at play. There's nothing at all keeping MS from requiring an update for the game when it's launched (plenty of games have this) and having that update block the play of the game. Nevermind that if you do such a thing, you're not only violating a contract with MS or Sony or Nintendo, you're also garnering a HUGE amount of ill-will from them, and thus - there goes your ability to have things work smoothly.
All this on TOP of the negative publicity folks like JT will bring to bear on your company for releasing such an evil game. This doesn't matter so much for Rockstar and Take Two - these are the people that brought us the GTA games, naturally, so no one who's at all interested in the games is going to care anyhow; at most it'll inform a few people who didn't know about it that a new title is in the offing. On the other hand, new/small developers or publishers would end up totally crushed. The PC is the only venue for such things, and the retail restrictions still exist (world's largest retailer and the biggest games chain in the US not carrying your product isn't exactly going to help), so assuming you can get the word out (many places wouldn't be interested in advertising an AO rated game any more than they'd be interested in advertising an NC-17 film, for the most part).
People (here, notably) keep preaching gameplay trumps graphics. It wouldn't be impossible to make a game with great gameplay that appeals to the masses, but I really think you can carve out a dedicated fanbase with a more specific, more intense, perhaps more difficult gameplay. Might have to sacrifice some things like x million users or glitzy graphics to stay in budget for a MMO of 10,000 or 100,000 users... but I think it might be worth doing. I think the key is that gameplay trumps graphics in the long run. If you see screenshots of two games and neither screenshot can properly convey the actual gameplay (which is very often the case of still screenshots - nevertheless, still screenshots are still one of the major ways games are promoted, especially on store shelves), but one looks like it escaped from System Shock 2 and the other looking like Doom 3, you might be well inclined to at least TRY the prettier game while you might not try the other.
Of course, in the long run, this would be the mistake if the games in question really *were* System Shock 2 and Doom 3.
Graphics aren't needed to keep people playing as much as they are to get people started. Gameplay that appeals to them (for whatever reason, in whatever way) is what keeps them around. You'll have a much easier time roping in ten or a hundred thousand users to at least TRY the game (and possibly play it long-term) with good graphics. This is sad but inevitable. And if you get good graphics AND good gameplay, then you're golden (for a while at least).
The Covenant is not portrayed as totally evil or flat (or at least, not if you actually take a look at the story), although they are fairly unstoppable. Heaven forbid the villains of the piece be threatening. Starship Troopers had the bugs (talking the novel more than the movie here), Star Trek had the Borg, the (original, historical) Spartans had the Persians. This is common. Hell, look at the Galactic Empire or the forces of Sauron, from other 'epic' type storytelling examples. It isn't meant to be a gritty and realistic setup.
His name is not a 'superlative name', it's a rank. And a pretty reasonable for someone of his apparent specialty (infantry combat with a sprinkling of special ops and vehicular combat) and skill in that specialty (significant). Master Chief Petty Officer is, in fact, a US Navy rate, and the highest Enlisted rating (short of Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy) available, and it's pretty clear that the fictional military (UNSC) that's being dealt with is based heavily on the framework of the United States Navy (and the Marines, clearly enough, that operate in concert with them).
The insane AI concept is interesting, but not particularly deeply explored in the Halo games (whereas, in contrast, it was extensively explored in the first two Marathon games, the second of which actually was released for Windows 95, and then re-released for XBLA). As far as the couching of things in biblical terms, it makes sense if your enemies are a cohesive whole built around a set of very strong core beliefs. Those beliefs could be religious, scientific, economic or philosophical, but without the necessary frame of reference, any translation of their terms would be likely to end up with biblical connotations.
Your 'covenant = Islamofascist' take on things is interesting, but seems to be based at least as much on personal projection as on evidence. Clearly, then, if we look at a film about Jean d'Arc, it's all just playing to the fact that we're fighting so-called Islamofascists now, right?
Just because we are fighting an insurgent war where the other side tends to mostly be made up of adherents to a religion different than our own does not invalidate the use of religion as a driving force for a fictional group of militants in whatever time period or whatever scale.
Myself, I saw similarities between the Covenant and the Islamists, but then - I saw similarities between the Covenant and the United States of America (which is a Christian nation, in truth, separation of church and State and freedom of worship or no).
It's interesting that your two examples of everything being flat are both misplaced; it really deflates what otherwise has some interesting discussion involved.
Somehow I doubt the 'similar' Batman sets had anywhere near the number of pieces (though I admit that might be possible) since, at 5000 pieces, this is the biggest Lego set of which I am aware. $500 is a lot of money for some people and a little for others (I fall into the former camp, and I still want one, though I doubt I'll buy it, as the cats would destroy it...)
$0.10 per piece doesn't seem too bad for me. This is a FIVE THOUSAND piece set. That's a big friggin' set.
I see morality as a series of absolutes. (Quite probably a flaw by the thinking of many or most.)
Shooting someone (going back a few replies elsewhere) is immoral (rather than 'bad') because you're inflicting harm on another (and in certain contexts (possibly terrorists), some people need harm inflicted upon them - which can make a particular instance justified but no more moral).
I suppose what it boils down to is that moral actions and 'correct' actions are separate in my mind. Maybe I'm just wrong in the way I perceive things. To go back to the initial point, I don't think that you can decide stealing is not immoral when you steal from wealthy_target while it is immoral when you are stealing from not_wealthy_target. Stealing from the former may seem or even be justified, but it is still (to my mind) immoral.
Perhaps I'm just wrong and justified action *is* moral.
Not everyone sees things the same way (I did not that in my original comment). For *me* specifically, there's a difference between a justified choice and a moral choice. Immoral actions may be justified. There may be no justification for making the moral choice or taking the moral action.
Justification is included in morality for some people, but I try not to think that way, as (in my mind) it blurs the edges in places it shouldn't necessarily blur them.
Many people (particularly here on/.) wouldn't think that installing windows on a box without paying for it is immoral. (Well, okay, they'd think the installing it part was potentially immoral but not the not paying for it part.) If you stop thinking of that as immoral (and if it is or not is a whole different debate, once more I'm just using a convenient example), it becomes easy to decide to install a copy of Bioshock without buying it (copy protection aside), or TurboTax, or Excel or PhotoShop or maybe CAD software and so on down the line.
I try to think of an action as "justified" rather than "moral because it is justified" to avoid such mental blurring (which doesn't, of course, always work) on my own part.
I freely admit that there might well be *justification* for taking an action that would otherwise be possibly considered immoral (see: stealing Windows after buying a new computer). The justification may be only in your own mind, or held as valid by many others, but the root action (theft or piracy in this hypothetical) is either moral or immoral. If it's immoral but you do it anyway because you've justified it (at least to yourself), that's the sort of situation you're talking about.
Now, don't take this to mean I think that people should end up with their iPhones bricked because they didn't want to (or in some cases literally could not) use AT&T's network and so chose to unlock and use another. I'm just saying that if you are stealing (as an example), it is either always moral or always immoral, regardless of the victim. Justification is a whole different ball of wax.
On the other hand, I believe it is far more likely that the warning from Apple stems from the fact that Apple probably has not (and should not reasonably be expected to) run QA tests on their new firmware against whatever various hacks and cracks people may have applied.
Do you think Subaru or Toyota is going to honor a warranty if you use third-party device to reprogram your ECU and it bricks? Do you think they SHOULD?
(The issue of locking phones being moral or immoral is a whole different kettle of fish, naturally - but that's just The Way Things Are Here [tm].)
The way I see it (and I freely admit that this is the way *I* see it, and not the way everyone necessarily does or should), a choice and an action is either moral or immoral at it's root.
An immoral choice may well be the 'right' choice and the 'justified' choice (since the end really CAN justify the means in some cases). Choosing not to evacuate or warn Coventry when it was known a Luftwaffe bombing raid was going to hit it was immoral. It was also quite clearly justified.
I see justification and morality as separate issues. Immoral actions may be justified, and moral actions may be contra-indicated at times.
Stealing is still stealing, even if you are stealing from a billion dollar corporation. Because you're stealing from Microsoft instead of Ambrosia Software doesn't make it any more moral to be stealing. Less harm might be done, and it might be argued that it could be justified (just using hypotheticals here), but theft doesn't suddenly become moral because the victim is hugely wealthy.
In my mind, morality is never, ever dependent upon who is on the other end of the equation. Only justifications are dependent upon that.
You may consider it justified to steal from someone who has billions and immoral to steal from someone who doesn't (I'm not saying unlocking an iPhone is stealing, I am just using an obvious example), but the morality of theft depends on if it is theft or not, not who the victim is.
(Admittedly - this is purely my position and opinion, and not absolute fact.)
The major flaw is not how it's rated, but the fact that it is rated. I have no problem with independent reviewers rating games and/or movies, but I do have a problem with an arbitrary organization making ratings; it becomes legalized censorship.
This is no different than the rating on films, yet no-one seems to complain about them.
This is vastly different than the rating on films, for two very important reasons.
The first: The ratings are not entirely consistent. A film with brief, non-titillating nudity can still sometimes get a PG-13 rating, while Janet Jackson's infamous 'wardrobe malfunction' (or it's digital equivalent) would instantly garner an 'M' rating from the ESRB.
The second: As some have said before in other posts, it is much more challenging to get any sort of audience at all for a video game that receives the dreaded AO. You won't get it on the PS3, the GameCube, or the Xbox 360. And if you release it for OS X, Windows, or Linux - good luck on finding a distribution channel (other than your own website) and good luck marketing it. For an NC-17 rated film, the distribution channels are certainly narrower than for something rated R, but they exist. Independent and 'art house' theaters frequently (at least in my area) end up showing films that have been given an NC-17 rating.
Additional issues include the inconsistency. A movie with the preponderance of gore and violence (as opposed to dialogue or story) that's found in a game like Gears of War or Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas or BioShock would almost certainly end up with an NC-17 rating, while the aforementioned games (Hot Coffee aside) were 'M' rather than AO. The issue is definitely complicated.
Further, it grows more complex because a movie may be cut down to remove the most egregious material and come in 'under the wire' for an R rating rather than an NC-17, and this can mean the removal of mere seconds of footage that are truly gratuitous (like when ED-209 blows away an OCP executive in a tech demo gone far more awry than a mere BSoD, in the first RoboCop movie: I believe only 5 or 10 seconds of footage are removed). However, this footage can be put back in and released on LaserDisc (in the case of RoboCop, originally) or more realistically (and more in this century) on DVD as the 'Uncut, Unrated Special Edition', and sold freely at stores like Fry's and Best Buy. This is NOT an option for most games. It's perhaps possible that Take Two could have released an M-rated Manhunt 2, with a purchase-and-download mod-pack to 'put it back' to AO, but that's unlikely. And if done, the ESRB would probably insist on slapping an AO on all the Manhunt 2 boxes. And for consoles, as mentioned before - forget it.
I'm all for having ratings; I think it's fair for kids to want what they want and parents to not necessarily know everything about that in advance. I also think it's fair for the industry to try to provide the parents with SOME idea of what they'd be getting their kids into, especially if it obviates the need for governmental intervention. On the other hand, my favorite games tend to be T or M rated and violent, but not usually to the level of Manhunt or Gears of War. Halo, World of Warcraft, System Shock 2, BioShock, Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo, and on and on. I don't have a burning desire (or really much desire at all) to play Manhunt 2, but the fact that it couldn't see the light of day without being 'cleaned up' is a little saddening.
What if art galleries decided that potentially-offensive content was more than they wanted to risk having on display? What if no one under the age of 18 could see Michaelangelo's David because his pecker's on display (or worse yet, someone insisted on a big, black square being put up in front of it)? I don't contend that Manhunt 2 has anywhere near the cultural significance or artistic value of the David - but it would be nice if there were outlets for the 'fringe' games as well as the ones that meet the ESRB's M-or-lower standards.
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Amen to this.
I was involved in a fairly serious motor-vehicle accident last October. On the freeway, at freeway speeds, with airbag deployment involved.
I and the driver of the other vehicle were taken to the hospital in an ambulance ('just to be sure' because of airbag deployment, despite strong evidence that my only injury was to my ankle -- nothing wrong with taking care in these cases).
I arrived at the ER, was looked at for perhaps 90 seconds by a doctor (no, not much of an exaggeration if any here) and they declared I had a sprain and that was that. I was stuck in a corner, eventually an orderly brought me an ACE bandage, and I limped out (not even given crutches, yay!) and met my roommate who was picking me up.
I don't know what the charge for the ambulance ride was, but I do know that the bill for the hospital was $2,400.
Not one X-ray, no lab work at all, just 90 seconds of a doctor declaring I simply had a sprain.
(For the record, I had more than a sprain; there was in fact a bone chip which is still causing me difficulty and hopefully will be removed surgically soon.)
So, yeah. Health care billing is about sixteen different kinds of jacked up.
I must agree here: Eternal Darkness was (until Skies of Arcadia got ported over, and then Tales of Symphonia showed up) the main reason I even kept a GameCube around.
Yes, Eternal Darkness showed plainly it's roots as a Nintendo 64 game that shifted platforms, but the underlying gameplay conceits and design held up. The story was interesting, the gameplay worked (for me, at least), and above all: it remained fun.
That said, I played the Too Human demo last night, and all I can say is that even if it isn't the most amazing game I've ever seen, I'm still considering purchasing it.
The limited taste of gameplay was enjoyable. The game's overall pay is not unfairly compared to Diablo (kill hordes of enemies, gain XP and pseudo-random loot), with an 'innovative' (or just 'different', if you prefer) interface.
I think where Too Human falls short in reviews is that over the (lengthy!) development cycle, it's been made out to the public like this is going to be ushering in a new era of epic gameplay and story. Gameplay is some old elements and some new ones, but what I saw of the story was a cut above a lot of the crap I've seen out there, but certainly it didn't seem to come across as well as the story (and the storytelling) in Call of Duty 4 or Mass Effect.
We were discussing the ethics of killing someone 'before they know what hit them.'
-b I know exactly what you were saying here, but I couldn't help the momentary and instantaneous thought: Just where are the right places to be perforated, anyhow?
While the cost-over-time is certainly much greater than all my 'play-once' games (even speaking as someone who bought Steel Batallion for the Xbox and the 'Legendary Edition' of Halo 3), there's a distressing number of games that never drop to $1/hr over time played. And this even includes games rented for $5.
If I buy a game that's 40 hours long and I paid $60 for it, I still get more 'value per dollar', in theory out of WoW.
That said, WoW isn't 'like other games', in that the social aspect (playing with cool people, chatting and such, not just smashing monsters in the face) is a big part of it. I'd rather spend $15 a month plus the initial $50 and the occasional (what, every 2 years?) additional 40-50 for expansions on a social game like WoW that I also enjoy as a game than the stream of games I've bought for $60 that I played for 20 or fewer hours over the course of a couple weeks and never touched again.
(Not that it'll stop me - I like many different kinds of games, including those played with no electronic assistance more involved than an incandescent or compact-flourescent lightbulb.)
Starbucks is nearly ubiquitous here in the US (and in other places) and is fairly consistent in what you get, regardless of location. This helps (look at McDonald's - I doubt there are many people who can't find a much tastier hamburger nearby, and yet they're quite successful).
Also, it isn't coffee. They make hot milkshakes. And if you find the (rare) location with a staff that actually cares, they can make halfway decent coffee.
Should there have been antitrust lawsuits against Creative when there was no way to get my (quite shitty, frankly) Rio to accept music except through their ludicrous software? Or what about Sony and their ATRAC monstrosities? Use any music you want as long as you convert it to ATRAC!
Where do we draw the line at letting hardware companies support what they want? Or should every new device support every imaginable format?
Because I'd like to point out that you can use an iPod without ever buying a single song from the iTunes store, even if you purchase your music online. MP3 support - it's not like that's some trivial, little-known fringe file-format.
Sure you have to use iTunes to move music onto the iPod. And I have to use proprietary, provided software from the manufacturer to work with a number of various hardware products and peripherals. I don't see the big deal, frankly.
This was mentioned somewhere (but I am too lazy to dig up a ling - [citation needed], whee). This is done to ensure backwards compatibility with original Xbox titles (such as Crimson Skies and Halo 1/2, I imagine), where apparently a friends list that exceeds 100 breaks things.
That said, the guy who mentioned this limitation and it's reason (a Microsoft guy) also mentioned that it bothers him since his friends list is full.
Not that it's an excuse; it's merely a reason.
Such a steal, too - they include the cockpit sunvisor in your $28,950,000 pricetag!
I don't entirely disagree, but - every situation is different. I'm certainly not going an hour each way to flip burgers, I assure you. I have an interesting job. And in my particular case the travel time is a cost I've chosen to assume (I could get an apartment probably ten minutes from work, but it would cost near what I'm paying now and likely be a far, far less desirable overall situation, since through pure good fortune, I've gotten a ludicrously good deal on living arrangements).
/. or whatever.
One of the big problems in a sprawled multi-metro area (San Jose/San Francisco/Oakland, the greater SF Bay Area, is a perfect example of this, alas) is that we have:
BART - Elevated/sub-surface commuter trains
CalTrain - Steel wheels, along a corridor between San Francisco and San Jose
VTA - Santa Clara County's public transit agency; lots of buses, some pretty decent light rail
AC Transit - San Mateo and the East Bay (not 100% sure on their whole area) public transit agency, more buses here.
MUNI - San Francisco's public transit (buses, etc)
Not all of these interoperate perfectly. To get from parts of San Jose to Oakland it could be as 'simple' as: VTA light rail to a VTA express bus to a BART station - and I'm assuming you live along one of the light rail lines, or near enough, and don't need a bus to get there.
The sprawl isn't a purely geographical, distance-related problem, it's a political one. Leaving aside industry lobbying from automakers, airlines and the Gnomes of Zurich, you still have each locality having their say (San Mateo's infamous desire to -not- have BART run through town so they wouldn't become San Francisco's bedroom community... that worked pretty well...)
While I love my car and often enjoy driving, I would be more than happy to fork over a couple hundred bucks a month (I can currently easily spend $80 a week just on gasoline if I do a fair amount of non-work driving, like going anywhere on the weekends) for a mass transit pass and spend my hour (or even hour and a half) on the train (or whatever) instead of behind the wheel. I'd happily bust out the laptop and wireless broadband card and just work or read
Unfortunately we're too balkanized on the issue ('we' being the general population of the US) to pull together a good solution on our own.
Everyone take the bus! Now there's a realistic solution to the energy problem.
I'm sorry, but is that sarcasm I detect? Because I really don't see the problem here. Plenty of countries run primarily on mass transport and non-ICE vehicles (you know, 'bikes' and 'walking'). What actually necessitates a car? What necessitates a car? Living 40 miles from your job and not being on the (one) train route, near the (limited) light rail, and having to cross two counties' bus systems. I can drive my Toyota that get 30ish MPG (and hey, I'll be car pooling in a couple of weeks, too, when my schedule changes), or I can spend about three hours each way to use mass transit at a very minimal financial gain (and a net loss, given the time).
The US is unlike most of Europe and a lot of Asia in a lot of ways, and not the least of it is cities that grew up with the automobile. For good or ill, working within walking distance of one's home (or even where you can use mass transit) isn't always an option. Things are far too spread out. Around 2001 I worked a relatively short 15 or so miles from my home (I did eventually move much closer). The 20 minutes of driving it took to get to and from work would have been replaced with almost two hours each way to use mass transit.
That's because we don't have businesses and residential areas densely packed enough outside of actual cities (in other words, in our massive suburban sprawl, like most of the San Francisco Bay Area) to make mass transit a viable option for everyone (or even for half of everyone) the way the New York City subway works out.
The United States is just not built for optimal efficiency of mass transit, and there are a lot of reasons this is so.
That is what makes a car necessary (for some/many people - but not for everyone: I know people who live and work in the SF Bay Area without owning a car).
No - no save games (that I'm aware of). But it has internal flash specifically for holding config info. It requires a memory unit (because, you know, it's MS so it's not a memory -card-) or a hard disk to save games. And games will prompt you to select a device to save or load from if you've got a hard disk and a memory unit both attached, but make no references to any other storage devices.
Actually - yes, it does.
Not a lot (for saving games/profiles, for example) but plenty enough to save configuration information. Wireless network setup and so on (and so, thus, I would imagine would be parental controls info) are kept just fine when swapping hard drives, while there's no memory card in any of the slots.
I've seen/done this myself (swapping hard drives, etc). I have no idea of the precise quantity and nature of the storage that's used, but it's certainly some form of flash or flash-like storage.
I used to work for EA. They're the Microsoft of games. No shock there to anyone. However: They aren't as assimilation prone as they once were. Digital Illusions (DICE) did quite well when EA ate them. Maxis still did some decent things, still.
Westwood not so much.
On the other hand, it's entirely possible that with a group like BioWare, the scenario will be closer to what happened with Bungie: More money to spend on production, wider distribution (not that that's a real problem, honestly, for BioWare) and greater success for the IP they're working on (Halo for Bungie, Mass Effect for BioWare).
Pandemic has had less spectacular successes than BioWare, but I have liked a lot of their work. While my gut reaction is 'Oh, fuck!', I still (perhaps quite naively) hold out a smidge of hope that things might not be as bad as I tend to think they will be.
Since the Expos are now the Nationals, I guess they figured that was a pretty safe bet, what with the way the Toronto Blue Jays are(n't) tearing things up, of late. Seems like a safe bet, sadly.
Aside from most stores (EBGames/GameStop/etc and WalMart probably make up the lion's share of retail sales, so ditching them is a bad idea) not being willing to carry AO titles, the console manufacturers won't approve a title that's AO. That means you they won't license you the necessary software for that title so that it'll run - the copy-protection and authentication stuff.
You might have these things handy anyhow, but - two factors are at play. There's nothing at all keeping MS from requiring an update for the game when it's launched (plenty of games have this) and having that update block the play of the game. Nevermind that if you do such a thing, you're not only violating a contract with MS or Sony or Nintendo, you're also garnering a HUGE amount of ill-will from them, and thus - there goes your ability to have things work smoothly.
All this on TOP of the negative publicity folks like JT will bring to bear on your company for releasing such an evil game. This doesn't matter so much for Rockstar and Take Two - these are the people that brought us the GTA games, naturally, so no one who's at all interested in the games is going to care anyhow; at most it'll inform a few people who didn't know about it that a new title is in the offing. On the other hand, new/small developers or publishers would end up totally crushed. The PC is the only venue for such things, and the retail restrictions still exist (world's largest retailer and the biggest games chain in the US not carrying your product isn't exactly going to help), so assuming you can get the word out (many places wouldn't be interested in advertising an AO rated game any more than they'd be interested in advertising an NC-17 film, for the most part).
Of course, in the long run, this would be the mistake if the games in question really *were* System Shock 2 and Doom 3.
Graphics aren't needed to keep people playing as much as they are to get people started. Gameplay that appeals to them (for whatever reason, in whatever way) is what keeps them around. You'll have a much easier time roping in ten or a hundred thousand users to at least TRY the game (and possibly play it long-term) with good graphics. This is sad but inevitable. And if you get good graphics AND good gameplay, then you're golden (for a while at least).
The Covenant is not portrayed as totally evil or flat (or at least, not if you actually take a look at the story), although they are fairly unstoppable. Heaven forbid the villains of the piece be threatening. Starship Troopers had the bugs (talking the novel more than the movie here), Star Trek had the Borg, the (original, historical) Spartans had the Persians. This is common. Hell, look at the Galactic Empire or the forces of Sauron, from other 'epic' type storytelling examples. It isn't meant to be a gritty and realistic setup.
His name is not a 'superlative name', it's a rank. And a pretty reasonable for someone of his apparent specialty (infantry combat with a sprinkling of special ops and vehicular combat) and skill in that specialty (significant). Master Chief Petty Officer is, in fact, a US Navy rate, and the highest Enlisted rating (short of Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy) available, and it's pretty clear that the fictional military (UNSC) that's being dealt with is based heavily on the framework of the United States Navy (and the Marines, clearly enough, that operate in concert with them).
The insane AI concept is interesting, but not particularly deeply explored in the Halo games (whereas, in contrast, it was extensively explored in the first two Marathon games, the second of which actually was released for Windows 95, and then re-released for XBLA). As far as the couching of things in biblical terms, it makes sense if your enemies are a cohesive whole built around a set of very strong core beliefs. Those beliefs could be religious, scientific, economic or philosophical, but without the necessary frame of reference, any translation of their terms would be likely to end up with biblical connotations.
Your 'covenant = Islamofascist' take on things is interesting, but seems to be based at least as much on personal projection as on evidence. Clearly, then, if we look at a film about Jean d'Arc, it's all just playing to the fact that we're fighting so-called Islamofascists now, right?
Just because we are fighting an insurgent war where the other side tends to mostly be made up of adherents to a religion different than our own does not invalidate the use of religion as a driving force for a fictional group of militants in whatever time period or whatever scale.
Myself, I saw similarities between the Covenant and the Islamists, but then - I saw similarities between the Covenant and the United States of America (which is a Christian nation, in truth, separation of church and State and freedom of worship or no).
It's interesting that your two examples of everything being flat are both misplaced; it really deflates what otherwise has some interesting discussion involved.
Somehow I doubt the 'similar' Batman sets had anywhere near the number of pieces (though I admit that might be possible) since, at 5000 pieces, this is the biggest Lego set of which I am aware. $500 is a lot of money for some people and a little for others (I fall into the former camp, and I still want one, though I doubt I'll buy it, as the cats would destroy it...)
$0.10 per piece doesn't seem too bad for me. This is a FIVE THOUSAND piece set. That's a big friggin' set.
I see morality as a series of absolutes. (Quite probably a flaw by the thinking of many or most.)
Shooting someone (going back a few replies elsewhere) is immoral (rather than 'bad') because you're inflicting harm on another (and in certain contexts (possibly terrorists), some people need harm inflicted upon them - which can make a particular instance justified but no more moral).
I suppose what it boils down to is that moral actions and 'correct' actions are separate in my mind. Maybe I'm just wrong in the way I perceive things. To go back to the initial point, I don't think that you can decide stealing is not immoral when you steal from wealthy_target while it is immoral when you are stealing from not_wealthy_target. Stealing from the former may seem or even be justified, but it is still (to my mind) immoral.
Perhaps I'm just wrong and justified action *is* moral.
Not everyone sees things the same way (I did not that in my original comment). For *me* specifically, there's a difference between a justified choice and a moral choice. Immoral actions may be justified. There may be no justification for making the moral choice or taking the moral action.
/.) wouldn't think that installing windows on a box without paying for it is immoral. (Well, okay, they'd think the installing it part was potentially immoral but not the not paying for it part.) If you stop thinking of that as immoral (and if it is or not is a whole different debate, once more I'm just using a convenient example), it becomes easy to decide to install a copy of Bioshock without buying it (copy protection aside), or TurboTax, or Excel or PhotoShop or maybe CAD software and so on down the line.
Justification is included in morality for some people, but I try not to think that way, as (in my mind) it blurs the edges in places it shouldn't necessarily blur them.
Many people (particularly here on
I try to think of an action as "justified" rather than "moral because it is justified" to avoid such mental blurring (which doesn't, of course, always work) on my own part.
I freely admit that there might well be *justification* for taking an action that would otherwise be possibly considered immoral (see: stealing Windows after buying a new computer). The justification may be only in your own mind, or held as valid by many others, but the root action (theft or piracy in this hypothetical) is either moral or immoral. If it's immoral but you do it anyway because you've justified it (at least to yourself), that's the sort of situation you're talking about.
Now, don't take this to mean I think that people should end up with their iPhones bricked because they didn't want to (or in some cases literally could not) use AT&T's network and so chose to unlock and use another. I'm just saying that if you are stealing (as an example), it is either always moral or always immoral, regardless of the victim. Justification is a whole different ball of wax.
On the other hand, I believe it is far more likely that the warning from Apple stems from the fact that Apple probably has not (and should not reasonably be expected to) run QA tests on their new firmware against whatever various hacks and cracks people may have applied.
Do you think Subaru or Toyota is going to honor a warranty if you use third-party device to reprogram your ECU and it bricks? Do you think they SHOULD?
(The issue of locking phones being moral or immoral is a whole different kettle of fish, naturally - but that's just The Way Things Are Here [tm].)
The way I see it (and I freely admit that this is the way *I* see it, and not the way everyone necessarily does or should), a choice and an action is either moral or immoral at it's root.
An immoral choice may well be the 'right' choice and the 'justified' choice (since the end really CAN justify the means in some cases). Choosing not to evacuate or warn Coventry when it was known a Luftwaffe bombing raid was going to hit it was immoral. It was also quite clearly justified.
I see justification and morality as separate issues. Immoral actions may be justified, and moral actions may be contra-indicated at times.
Stealing is still stealing, even if you are stealing from a billion dollar corporation. Because you're stealing from Microsoft instead of Ambrosia Software doesn't make it any more moral to be stealing. Less harm might be done, and it might be argued that it could be justified (just using hypotheticals here), but theft doesn't suddenly become moral because the victim is hugely wealthy.
In my mind, morality is never, ever dependent upon who is on the other end of the equation. Only justifications are dependent upon that.
You may consider it justified to steal from someone who has billions and immoral to steal from someone who doesn't (I'm not saying unlocking an iPhone is stealing, I am just using an obvious example), but the morality of theft depends on if it is theft or not, not who the victim is.
(Admittedly - this is purely my position and opinion, and not absolute fact.)
Seeing a 'Is Fox News fair and balanced?' poll as the ad for this story makes me amused.
This is no different than the rating on films, yet no-one seems to complain about them.
This is vastly different than the rating on films, for two very important reasons.
The first: The ratings are not entirely consistent. A film with brief, non-titillating nudity can still sometimes get a PG-13 rating, while Janet Jackson's infamous 'wardrobe malfunction' (or it's digital equivalent) would instantly garner an 'M' rating from the ESRB.
The second: As some have said before in other posts, it is much more challenging to get any sort of audience at all for a video game that receives the dreaded AO. You won't get it on the PS3, the GameCube, or the Xbox 360. And if you release it for OS X, Windows, or Linux - good luck on finding a distribution channel (other than your own website) and good luck marketing it. For an NC-17 rated film, the distribution channels are certainly narrower than for something rated R, but they exist. Independent and 'art house' theaters frequently (at least in my area) end up showing films that have been given an NC-17 rating.
Additional issues include the inconsistency. A movie with the preponderance of gore and violence (as opposed to dialogue or story) that's found in a game like Gears of War or Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas or BioShock would almost certainly end up with an NC-17 rating, while the aforementioned games (Hot Coffee aside) were 'M' rather than AO. The issue is definitely complicated.Further, it grows more complex because a movie may be cut down to remove the most egregious material and come in 'under the wire' for an R rating rather than an NC-17, and this can mean the removal of mere seconds of footage that are truly gratuitous (like when ED-209 blows away an OCP executive in a tech demo gone far more awry than a mere BSoD, in the first RoboCop movie: I believe only 5 or 10 seconds of footage are removed). However, this footage can be put back in and released on LaserDisc (in the case of RoboCop, originally) or more realistically (and more in this century) on DVD as the 'Uncut, Unrated Special Edition', and sold freely at stores like Fry's and Best Buy. This is NOT an option for most games. It's perhaps possible that Take Two could have released an M-rated Manhunt 2, with a purchase-and-download mod-pack to 'put it back' to AO, but that's unlikely. And if done, the ESRB would probably insist on slapping an AO on all the Manhunt 2 boxes. And for consoles, as mentioned before - forget it.
I'm all for having ratings; I think it's fair for kids to want what they want and parents to not necessarily know everything about that in advance. I also think it's fair for the industry to try to provide the parents with SOME idea of what they'd be getting their kids into, especially if it obviates the need for governmental intervention. On the other hand, my favorite games tend to be T or M rated and violent, but not usually to the level of Manhunt or Gears of War. Halo, World of Warcraft, System Shock 2, BioShock, Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo, and on and on. I don't have a burning desire (or really much desire at all) to play Manhunt 2, but the fact that it couldn't see the light of day without being 'cleaned up' is a little saddening.
What if art galleries decided that potentially-offensive content was more than they wanted to risk having on display? What if no one under the age of 18 could see Michaelangelo's David because his pecker's on display (or worse yet, someone insisted on a big, black square being put up in front of it)? I don't contend that Manhunt 2 has anywhere near the cultural significance or artistic value of the David - but it would be nice if there were outlets for the 'fringe' games as well as the ones that meet the ESRB's M-or-lower standards.