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And emotions are a means to moral enlightenment, and moral enlightenment is a means to getting closer to Jesus, and getting closer to Jesus is a means to....blah blah blah blah blah.
Some dead German (Heidegger? Kant?) said that philosophy was not useful, and that was precisely why it was valuable. You don't use philosophy to do anything; philosophy is the end, the purpose toward which all useful things flow. Fortunately, we don't actually have to parse that or even pay attention to it; for the purpose of this discussion, the "ends" are entirely commercial. They are things that you provide a consumer, that a consumer does not use toward another commercial endeavor. I drink beer because I like beer, not because I need to use the beer for any purpose. I drive a car because I need to get places, not because I like driving. (Although I do.) One of these is an end, one of these is a means. It should be evident which is which.
Of course, if you run a casino, beer is a means, and if you are Jay Leno, a car is an end. But it's hard to be so vague when we're talking about TV shows versus software libraries.
Ad-supported is not the same as freeware. Ad-supported means "commercial" in this context. If you want to say that ad-supported media is viable, of course I agree---I am aware that television exists. What you're suggesting isn't paradigm-shifting or anything, it's just "cheaper production, fewer commercials." Maybe that's a viable business model, maybe it isn't, but it's not the same thing as free software.
When you say something like, "We're going to front the money to produce a show and then release it under Creative Commons," you're shooting yourself in the foot as far as advertising goes. (As an aside, I'm sure you recognize how a release with ads is not "non-commercial.") Sure, you could bundle commercials with it, but if you're not controlling redistribution, you're going to have problems with sponsors. Most importantly, you're going to have poor usage statistics, which is probably the most important thing in dealing with an advertiser---they need to know roughly how many people are viewing the ads, and those stats are hard to come by when you've got redistribution, remixing (e.g., stripping out the commercials), and so on. Or even worse, producing the content and having your commercials replaced with other commercials by a competitor with a different contract. The license that this show is using does not offer these protections to the content-producer, which is fine if you're producing content for the good of mankind, but not so fine if you're trying to make money off of it, or even just pay your production costs.
The difference is that the successful free software has paying jobs for it mostly because the successful free software is a means to an end, not an end in an of itself. A program like Apache is popular not because anyone wants a web server for its own merits, but because they need one for a web site that hosts whatever project is their end. Large-scale open-source projects like Mozilla are able to stay afloat mainly because they *don't* rely on donations or the kindness of strangers; they have a revenue stream already built-in.
On the other hand, a TV show is not a means to anything. Doesn't mean it's not valuable, it just means that nobody's going to fund its development unless they can monetize it, which in the case of entertainment, means commercializing it. (Ads, premium, whatever.)
I'm downloading the show and if I enjoy it, I may make a donation. But I don't expect that they'll make much more than production costs. If they make a really popular show, they might be able to continue it. And if it's something they enjoy doing and keep their day jobs, then it's a win-win for everybody. But I sincerely doubt that they'll actually compete with professional production.
I've met plenty of people (mostly girls) who will play FF and no other video games. There's a reason X-2 exists, and it's because Square recognized this segment of their market and wanted to grow it. (Unfortunately alienating their base.)
I think something along the lines of Final Fantasy---with perhaps a gentler introduction and more streamlined use of items and level progression---would meet the criteria for an "intermediate" game.
I'm not sure I agree with your rankings. For instance, I'd rank Halo as being much more hardcore than Dragon Age. Unless by "harcore" you mean "complex", in which case Farmville is more hardcore than Bejeweled, etc.
But given your list, the question pretty much answers itself when there is only 1 line between "Cooking Mama" and "Diablo." Hell, even if you had never heard of these games, the names would give it away.
MGS may require full attention ("Oh shit, the guard's coming this way!"), but Final Fantasy? Not really. Sure, it's got high-end graphics and a complex storyline, but the gameplay itself is rather trivial.
You have to wonder, if this is a breach of "national security", then is the security we're talking about safety from Iraqis, or the military's security in the knowledge that they have no real popular referendum on their actions?
I found a pair of pants in a store that were very comfortable and stylish, and immediately appealed to my tastes. I took them to the front counter, where the shop owner was checking out the customers, and he said, "Okay, I'll sell you these pants very cheap, but you must agree to never, ever wear them on a Sunday." Without even really thinking about it, I signed the form, and took the pants home.
Well, I often wore them throughout the week, and I got a lot of compliments about the pants. They quickly became a staple of my wardrobe. But I hadn't worn them on a Sunday yet---so one day, figuring the old shopkeeper wasn't really going to hold me to it if I put the damn things on any day of the week I pleased, I pulled them out of my closet and got into them.
Just as soon as I had zipped up the zipper, suddenly, the pants started getting tighter. At first it was just uncomfortable, and I wondered if they had shrunk in the wash. But then it became painful, and I could barely move or breathe. My life flashed before my eyes. I felt like I was having the life literally squeezed out of me.
I stumbled over to the phone and called the store---which was fortunately open on Sundays. The owner picked up the phone. "Hello," he said.
"Pants...too...tight...." I wheezed.
"You're going to have to cut them off," he said flatly. "Don't expect me to help. It's Sunday."
"Why...are...pants...crushing....me."
"Well, you read the deal, didn't you? You're wearing them on a Sunday. It's a Breech of Contract."
I think you're confusing "adult" with "adult-only." Plenty of the things that we enjoy as children are still enjoyable as adults. (Granted, not everything.)
A lot of people, in their preteen and teenage years, distance themselves from from the stuff we liked as kids. Probably because there's a lot of social pressure not to be seen as childish, and so to stay away from things that are marketed to children or as being "family-friendly." I know I had a phase when I thought that if a movie wasn't rated R, it probably wasn't worth watching. I still like most of the movies I liked back then, but since then I've rediscovered, say, Disney movies.
This idea that you must make a Sin City style game to appeal to adults is patently ridiculous. The 40-year-olds, if they're buying a console, are all buying Wiis, and not just for their kids. The people who won't touch a good game because it's "kid stuff" are mostly insecure adolescents.
I meant "early" relative to English history, not Roman history. You should parse that as "Old English in 1000 AD was a Germanic language that had some small Latin influence from Roman occupation and would later get a lot of French influence from the Norman conquest."
Also, I'm not saying that English is actually a Romance language---you don't need more than a semester of high school Spanish to debunk that notion. If it really were a Romance language, then there wouldn't really be anything to remark on; the interesting thing is that it's a Germanic language that has absorbed so much Latin vocabulary that it seems like sort of the German cousin of the true Romantic languages. I don't know if that's common in language development or not.
Case in point: the only French phrase I know how to say is "parle vous anglais?" and I don't know how to spell it. I can take Beowulf (written in English about 1000 years ago) and Les Miserables (written in French about 150 years ago), and put them side to side...I can't actually read either of them, but I can get a bit more out of the French.
I had a roommate from Iran, and I was dumbfounded when he told me that they can actually read their own medieval literature.
Yes, all languages borrow from other languages. IANAL[inguist], but as far as I know most languages don't do it to the degree that English, historically, has. Old English is/was a Germanic language, but subsequent French (and early Latin) influence has had so much impact on the language that it's almost an honorary Romance language.
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Once people can't do anything with any of the stuff they own they will [...] be screwed.
FTFY
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You may notice that this is Slashdot. You may also notice that Thinkgeek and Slashdot are owned by the same parent company. (It does say so in the blurb, after all.) You may wonder if that has anything to do with Slashdot's editorializing. You may need to slap yourself on the forehead a few times and exclaim "D'oh!" if the connection does not then become obvious.
I'm sorry, I shouldn't be on this thread, for some reason I thought Swype == VoIP + BitTorrent.
And emotions are a means to moral enlightenment, and moral enlightenment is a means to getting closer to Jesus, and getting closer to Jesus is a means to....blah blah blah blah blah.
Some dead German (Heidegger? Kant?) said that philosophy was not useful, and that was precisely why it was valuable. You don't use philosophy to do anything; philosophy is the end, the purpose toward which all useful things flow. Fortunately, we don't actually have to parse that or even pay attention to it; for the purpose of this discussion, the "ends" are entirely commercial. They are things that you provide a consumer, that a consumer does not use toward another commercial endeavor. I drink beer because I like beer, not because I need to use the beer for any purpose. I drive a car because I need to get places, not because I like driving. (Although I do.) One of these is an end, one of these is a means. It should be evident which is which.
Of course, if you run a casino, beer is a means, and if you are Jay Leno, a car is an end. But it's hard to be so vague when we're talking about TV shows versus software libraries.
Ad-supported is not the same as freeware. Ad-supported means "commercial" in this context. If you want to say that ad-supported media is viable, of course I agree---I am aware that television exists. What you're suggesting isn't paradigm-shifting or anything, it's just "cheaper production, fewer commercials." Maybe that's a viable business model, maybe it isn't, but it's not the same thing as free software.
When you say something like, "We're going to front the money to produce a show and then release it under Creative Commons," you're shooting yourself in the foot as far as advertising goes. (As an aside, I'm sure you recognize how a release with ads is not "non-commercial.") Sure, you could bundle commercials with it, but if you're not controlling redistribution, you're going to have problems with sponsors. Most importantly, you're going to have poor usage statistics, which is probably the most important thing in dealing with an advertiser---they need to know roughly how many people are viewing the ads, and those stats are hard to come by when you've got redistribution, remixing (e.g., stripping out the commercials), and so on. Or even worse, producing the content and having your commercials replaced with other commercials by a competitor with a different contract. The license that this show is using does not offer these protections to the content-producer, which is fine if you're producing content for the good of mankind, but not so fine if you're trying to make money off of it, or even just pay your production costs.
But those cameras would have been so useful for spotting illegal immigrants!
You're talking about wildly different situations.
The difference is that the successful free software has paying jobs for it mostly because the successful free software is a means to an end, not an end in an of itself. A program like Apache is popular not because anyone wants a web server for its own merits, but because they need one for a web site that hosts whatever project is their end. Large-scale open-source projects like Mozilla are able to stay afloat mainly because they *don't* rely on donations or the kindness of strangers; they have a revenue stream already built-in.
On the other hand, a TV show is not a means to anything. Doesn't mean it's not valuable, it just means that nobody's going to fund its development unless they can monetize it, which in the case of entertainment, means commercializing it. (Ads, premium, whatever.)
I'm downloading the show and if I enjoy it, I may make a donation. But I don't expect that they'll make much more than production costs. If they make a really popular show, they might be able to continue it. And if it's something they enjoy doing and keep their day jobs, then it's a win-win for everybody. But I sincerely doubt that they'll actually compete with professional production.
I've met plenty of people (mostly girls) who will play FF and no other video games. There's a reason X-2 exists, and it's because Square recognized this segment of their market and wanted to grow it. (Unfortunately alienating their base.)
I think something along the lines of Final Fantasy---with perhaps a gentler introduction and more streamlined use of items and level progression---would meet the criteria for an "intermediate" game.
I'm not sure I agree with your rankings. For instance, I'd rank Halo as being much more hardcore than Dragon Age. Unless by "harcore" you mean "complex", in which case Farmville is more hardcore than Bejeweled, etc.
But given your list, the question pretty much answers itself when there is only 1 line between "Cooking Mama" and "Diablo." Hell, even if you had never heard of these games, the names would give it away.
WoW players and Farmville players are not the same people. In fact, I have yet to meet someone who plays both.
MGS may require full attention ("Oh shit, the guard's coming this way!"), but Final Fantasy? Not really. Sure, it's got high-end graphics and a complex storyline, but the gameplay itself is rather trivial.
You have to wonder, if this is a breach of "national security", then is the security we're talking about safety from Iraqis, or the military's security in the knowledge that they have no real popular referendum on their actions?
Generally we call that a "breech of contract"
Impromptu feghoot:
I found a pair of pants in a store that were very comfortable and stylish, and immediately appealed to my tastes. I took them to the front counter, where the shop owner was checking out the customers, and he said, "Okay, I'll sell you these pants very cheap, but you must agree to never, ever wear them on a Sunday." Without even really thinking about it, I signed the form, and took the pants home.
Well, I often wore them throughout the week, and I got a lot of compliments about the pants. They quickly became a staple of my wardrobe. But I hadn't worn them on a Sunday yet---so one day, figuring the old shopkeeper wasn't really going to hold me to it if I put the damn things on any day of the week I pleased, I pulled them out of my closet and got into them.
Just as soon as I had zipped up the zipper, suddenly, the pants started getting tighter. At first it was just uncomfortable, and I wondered if they had shrunk in the wash. But then it became painful, and I could barely move or breathe. My life flashed before my eyes. I felt like I was having the life literally squeezed out of me.
I stumbled over to the phone and called the store---which was fortunately open on Sundays. The owner picked up the phone. "Hello," he said.
"Pants...too...tight...." I wheezed.
"You're going to have to cut them off," he said flatly. "Don't expect me to help. It's Sunday."
"Why...are...pants...crushing....me."
"Well, you read the deal, didn't you? You're wearing them on a Sunday. It's a Breech of Contract."
Ba-dum-cha!
The word "phallic" exists because so many things look like dicks when they are, in fact, not actually dicks.
Man, I made the same point elsewhere in this thread, and now I've been caught agreeing with C.S. Lewis.
I think you're confusing "adult" with "adult-only." Plenty of the things that we enjoy as children are still enjoyable as adults. (Granted, not everything.)
A lot of people, in their preteen and teenage years, distance themselves from from the stuff we liked as kids. Probably because there's a lot of social pressure not to be seen as childish, and so to stay away from things that are marketed to children or as being "family-friendly." I know I had a phase when I thought that if a movie wasn't rated R, it probably wasn't worth watching. I still like most of the movies I liked back then, but since then I've rediscovered, say, Disney movies.
This idea that you must make a Sin City style game to appeal to adults is patently ridiculous. The 40-year-olds, if they're buying a console, are all buying Wiis, and not just for their kids. The people who won't touch a good game because it's "kid stuff" are mostly insecure adolescents.
So where do I find the other 1001 of them?
Well, I think you just proved that there's a class of people who understand binary but can't do subtraction.
Interesting. Do you have a citation?
Not that I don't believe you, just that I don't believe they wouldn't move production anyway.
Arabic != Farsi
I meant "early" relative to English history, not Roman history. You should parse that as "Old English in 1000 AD was a Germanic language that had some small Latin influence from Roman occupation and would later get a lot of French influence from the Norman conquest."
Also, I'm not saying that English is actually a Romance language---you don't need more than a semester of high school Spanish to debunk that notion. If it really were a Romance language, then there wouldn't really be anything to remark on; the interesting thing is that it's a Germanic language that has absorbed so much Latin vocabulary that it seems like sort of the German cousin of the true Romantic languages. I don't know if that's common in language development or not.
No, it's whatever Steve Jobs says it is.
One thing I like about voice-only on phone calls is that I can be naked, and the other person has no idea whatsoever.
The same goes for Internet forums.
Case in point: the only French phrase I know how to say is "parle vous anglais?" and I don't know how to spell it. I can take Beowulf (written in English about 1000 years ago) and Les Miserables (written in French about 150 years ago), and put them side to side...I can't actually read either of them, but I can get a bit more out of the French.
I had a roommate from Iran, and I was dumbfounded when he told me that they can actually read their own medieval literature.
Yes, all languages borrow from other languages. IANAL[inguist], but as far as I know most languages don't do it to the degree that English, historically, has. Old English is/was a Germanic language, but subsequent French (and early Latin) influence has had so much impact on the language that it's almost an honorary Romance language.