I agree; The percentage to legal, interesting tidbits on Youtube relative to the illegal stuff seems pretty high, especially compared to Napster back in the day.
I'm not sure if funny commercial clips are free of copyright though. I mean in most cases the advertiser is probably delighted with extras publicity, but they've also lost control over how their work is displayed.
On a semi-related note, I just made a tool that scrapes flickr to extract flickr notes as an HTML imagemap. I started it as an HTML screenscraper but then saw there didn't seem to be support for this in the flickr api.
(even if the boards are festering cesspools). FWIW, when you want specific advice on a specific game, I don't know of a better place to go... plus, more older games have a bit of community going on there than anywhere else I've seen.
You do get a lot of stupid msgboard-games played, but still.
Taking away the language thing, and maybe a propensity for smaller graphics and less white space (actually it reminds me of some asian newpapers I've seen in the USA) is that really any worse than yahoo or MSN portal pages?
Well, is the multiplayer set up to allow "clearing" of stages, or just playing through what's already been unlocked?
I mean a co-op mode that lets you play the main story of the game... that kind of gameplay really doesn't show up enough, but often it's nice to work together "against" the game.
You saw the same thing with multitaps and multiplayer gaming; sure Sony had 4-player gaming via multitaps, but because it wasn't built-in functionality, fewer developers bothered to support it (after all, it's not necessarily easy to make a game environment that can be multiplied by 4 on the same system..) I'm kind of a Sony-hater because even the post-N64 PS2 needed a (different!) multitap, and I think it set party-style gaming back a few years.
My theory is, gamers will spring for duplicates of the controller they consider "normal", but most other accesories remain "novelty items", including multitaps. (well maybe not memory cards). Still, because of this I'm very thankful that the Wii came bundled with a nunchuck controller; the nunchuck allows the Wii to stay in the same ballpark of controller evolution over the last decade (i.e. two analog-y inputs, and the one-finger-only precision of a thumbstick) while still remaining true to the "lets do something new" vibe. But if you only got a Wiimote, the nunchuck would barely be more popular than the "classic" controller.
Some of the lines were ok, but the voice acting was craptastic to say the least... like, middle school play level, with one guy asked to make up way more voices than he was ready for...
I have no idea if its HDMI equipped but I really don't know...
I would say that that kind of crap, stories of hardware not working out, could kill BlueRay/HD-DVD quick; but if the signal just "degrades gracefully", people probaby won't even notice.
Yeah, over the years I've played with a lot of various setups. I knew I didn't *need* to upgrade from a cheap 27" to a buddha like 36" just for the macrovision'/DVD issue, but it didn't hurt.
I currently use a DVD/VCR combo in lieu of a cable box for my video projector that I use instead of a tv. And I had a box to let me plug RCA stuff into an old coax-only tv. And another box to let an old 19" surplus monitor act as a TV screen in a pinch.
I gotta admit, I don't have a strong grasp of the latest connectors. There's S-Video and Component, and my new holiday-gift-to-myself projecter has this one "DVI" input that I don't know what would use... I guess a PS3 or HD disc player?
Judging by this one football game I was seeing shown on Circuit City's big plasma and LCD wall, it seems that somewhat softer pictures are being replaced with JPEG-ish artifacts, so I'm in no hurry to upgrade to digital cable...
I have an anecdote that supports you 100%... this was a few years ago, one of the LotR films had just come out to rental, but we were too late for the DVD, just VHS. So, new tape, obviously, but on our 36" regular television, I remember thinking "you know, DVDs don't look much better than this".
DVDs have their advantages: pausing on a VCR does tend to look terrible, random access, enough space for amusing goodies and alternate sound tracks, and generally looking good on a bookshelf, but I'll bet you if the resolution was no better than a VCR's, the long term sales impact wouldn't have been that much.
(Heh, in fact, maybe one reason DVD is perceived as so much better is people who had to upgrade coax-only televisions to something that could at least take in RCA jacks, since Macrovision made DVD over coax a no go!)
So, overall my take is that "fidelity" is low on most people's actual buying agenda, though it gets a lot of lipservice and makes for a lot of post-facto rationalization. My favorite case-in-point is how MP3 is gaining such strides over the (I think) higher fidelity CDs. So with that said, I think BluRay and HD-DVD have a HUGE struggle ahead of them, since their *only* differentiator seems to be fidelity.
DVDs do seem to be helping to push out "fullscreen" cropping, mercifully.
On the other hand, I find it annoying that DVDs don't come with channel tuners for the most part. Though maybe I'm just a basic cable, Tivoless neanderthal.
See, for you the value = hours / dollars... the more hours, the more value.
For me it's more like... value = hours / (hours + dollars) or actually it's a harder to calculate thing, like "# of interesting things I'm doing in the game" / (hours + dollars)
the "# of interesting things" has a correlation to hours, but they ain't one and the same.
Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction had a pretty good ratio, keeping me entertained through most of it.
The problem isn't mortality vs immortality, it's more about not having much of a choice about our lifespans. Sure, I might not want to live forever, but I'd probably want to live for at least centuries longer than I'm likely to.
"A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapter" has a great chapter on what most people's vision of immortality would actually be like, and makes your point that most people wouldn't want to live forever in the common Western portrayal of Heaven.
The thing is, for some people the cost is mostly the money, for others the cost is the amount of time it takes... for most it's probably some combination of the two...
I'm getting my mom a laptop for Christmas but am not really considering Mac... despite its ease of use, I think famililarity from work ultimately matters more for her. (And frankly, having an iBook for a while, I didn't think OSX was all that easy. Maybe I've been warped by Microsoft, but I think, say, the interface to navigate to an arbitrary folder in the standard "save as" dialog is just dumb)
That said, I'm thinking about buying a cheapish G3 iBook replacement... half just because I'm sick of PC laptops that take 5 minutes to unsuspend...
Slashdot Mirror
I agree; The percentage to legal, interesting tidbits on Youtube relative to the illegal stuff seems pretty high, especially compared to Napster back in the day.
I'm not sure if funny commercial clips are free of copyright though. I mean in most cases the advertiser is probably delighted with extras publicity, but they've also lost control over how their work is displayed.
Which is why I also wonder why phones PDA functions suck so bad, even worse than the constrained physical and screen interface would dictate.
And PocketPC's do the outlook thing... doesn't hold a candle to Palm but I guess it's better than nothing.
Yeah, after dabbling with a PocketPC (bleh) I'm back to seperate cell phone (Katana), palm (just bought a cheapie Z22), camera (canon sd630)...
it's kind of a lot to pocket, but each device is pretty compact by itself.
Banana Blitz... has some serious control issues in at least some of the games.
I know you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, but it feels like some of those games had no QA/Interface review whatsoever.
There really is still a surprising lack of 4 player simultaneous competitive greatness on the Wii.
Oh, he did the Indie Game Jam? Interesting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indie_Game_Jam
Electroplankton (DS)
Oh wait that's art, but not a game. Never mind...
On a semi-related note, I just made a tool that scrapes flickr to extract flickr notes as an HTML imagemap. I started it as an HTML screenscraper but then saw there didn't seem to be support for this in the flickr api.
(even if the boards are festering cesspools).
FWIW, when you want specific advice on a specific game, I don't know of a better place to go...
plus, more older games have a bit of community going on there than anywhere else I've seen.
You do get a lot of stupid msgboard-games played, but still.
Taking away the language thing, and maybe a propensity for smaller graphics and less white space (actually it reminds me of some asian newpapers I've seen in the USA) is that really any worse than yahoo or MSN portal pages?
Heh, you know, I hadn't thought of that, but it's a nicer idea than "play through it once and then pretend..."
Well, is the multiplayer set up to allow "clearing" of stages, or just playing through what's already been unlocked?
I mean a co-op mode that lets you play the main story of the game... that kind of gameplay really doesn't show up enough, but often it's nice to work together "against" the game.
It sucks.
It's just not fun to have someone else in control of your camera.
What they could have used is a co-op mode.... one person on camera, the other w/ the zapper.
A "rails" vesion might have worked as well. But a human controled camera, when you're not the human...bleh.
I just wanted to say, bleh, that article could have used less box art and more screenshot.
So very true.
You saw the same thing with multitaps and multiplayer gaming; sure Sony had 4-player gaming via multitaps, but because it wasn't built-in functionality, fewer developers bothered to support it (after all, it's not necessarily easy to make a game environment that can be multiplied by 4 on the same system..) I'm kind of a Sony-hater because even the post-N64 PS2 needed a (different!) multitap, and I think it set party-style gaming back a few years.
My theory is, gamers will spring for duplicates of the controller they consider "normal", but most other accesories remain "novelty items", including multitaps. (well maybe not memory cards). Still, because of this I'm very thankful that the Wii came bundled with a nunchuck controller; the nunchuck allows the Wii to stay in the same ballpark of controller evolution over the last decade (i.e. two analog-y inputs, and the one-finger-only precision of a thumbstick) while still remaining true to the "lets do something new" vibe. But if you only got a Wiimote, the nunchuck would barely be more popular than the "classic" controller.
Some of the lines were ok, but the voice acting was craptastic to say the least... like, middle school play level, with one guy asked to make up way more voices than he was ready for...
I have no idea if its HDMI equipped but I really don't know...
I would say that that kind of crap, stories of hardware not working out, could kill BlueRay/HD-DVD quick; but if the signal just "degrades gracefully", people probaby won't even notice.
Yeah, over the years I've played with a lot of various setups. I knew I didn't *need* to upgrade from a cheap 27" to a buddha like 36" just for the macrovision'/DVD issue, but it didn't hurt.
I currently use a DVD/VCR combo in lieu of a cable box for my video projector that I use instead of a tv. And I had a box to let me plug RCA stuff into an old coax-only tv. And another box to let an old 19" surplus monitor act as a TV screen in a pinch.
I gotta admit, I don't have a strong grasp of the latest connectors. There's S-Video and Component, and my new holiday-gift-to-myself projecter has this one "DVI" input that I don't know what would use... I guess a PS3 or HD disc player?
Judging by this one football game I was seeing shown on Circuit City's big plasma and LCD wall, it seems that somewhat softer pictures are being replaced with JPEG-ish artifacts, so I'm in no hurry to upgrade to digital cable...
I have an anecdote that supports you 100%... this was a few years ago,
one of the LotR films had just come out to rental, but we were too late for the DVD, just VHS. So, new tape, obviously, but on our 36" regular television, I remember thinking "you know, DVDs don't look much better than this".
DVDs have their advantages: pausing on a VCR does tend to look terrible, random access, enough space for amusing goodies and alternate sound tracks, and generally looking good on a bookshelf, but I'll bet you if the resolution was no better than a VCR's, the long term sales impact wouldn't have been that much.
(Heh, in fact, maybe one reason DVD is perceived as so much better is people who had to upgrade coax-only televisions to something that could at least take in RCA jacks, since Macrovision made DVD over coax a no go!)
So, overall my take is that "fidelity" is low on most people's actual buying agenda, though it gets a lot of lipservice and makes for a lot of post-facto rationalization. My favorite case-in-point is how MP3 is gaining such strides over the (I think) higher fidelity CDs. So with that said, I think BluRay and HD-DVD have a HUGE struggle ahead of them, since their *only* differentiator seems to be fidelity.
DVDs do seem to be helping to push out "fullscreen" cropping, mercifully.
On the other hand, I find it annoying that DVDs don't come with channel tuners for the most part. Though maybe I'm just a basic cable, Tivoless neanderthal.
I keep declining upgrading to iTunes 7 -- how is it? (this is on XP)
See, for you the ... the more hours, the more value.
value = hours / dollars
For me it's more like...
value = hours / (hours + dollars)
or actually it's a harder to calculate thing, like
"# of interesting things I'm doing in the game" / (hours + dollars)
the "# of interesting things" has a correlation to hours, but they ain't one and the same.
Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction had a pretty good ratio, keeping me entertained through most of it.
The problem isn't mortality vs immortality,
it's more about not having much of a choice about our lifespans.
Sure, I might not want to live forever, but I'd probably want to live for at least centuries longer than I'm likely to.
"A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapter" has a great chapter on what most people's vision of immortality would actually be like, and makes your point that most people wouldn't want to live forever in the common Western portrayal of Heaven.
The thing is, for some people the cost is mostly the money, for others the cost is the amount of time it takes... for most it's probably some combination of the two...
I figured as much, but figured there might be at least one area in the country where supply had out paced demand.
And what area is that, pray tell?
Boston area is super dry. Then again, it's a youthful town.
I'm getting my mom a laptop for Christmas but am not really considering Mac... despite its ease of use, I think famililarity from work ultimately matters more for her. (And frankly, having an iBook for a while, I didn't think OSX was all that easy. Maybe I've been warped by Microsoft, but I think, say, the interface to navigate to an arbitrary folder in the standard "save as" dialog is just dumb)
That said, I'm thinking about buying a cheapish G3 iBook replacement... half just because I'm sick of PC laptops that take 5 minutes to unsuspend...