Who in their right mind would subject themselves to advertising for the life of a product to save a measly $25. One would think that after the success of the Kindle and its proprietary nature they would be able to approach advertisers and offer a rather large captive audience that is fully trackable and work out a deal to basically give kindles away....that would have impressive and could have worked to make kindles as ubiquitous as television.
That doesn't matter though...what matters is the exact product in question is what has to have certification, subset, superset even a simple version change doesn't matter they all have to be submitted for certification, google hadn't done that yet claimed it had...yes it was a "technicality" but in the eyes of the govt. and their sometimes ridiculous processes an important one.
Sure how about zenonia 1 and 2, Rimelands, Across Age DX, Hybrid Eternal Whisper and Hybrid 2 are great for JRPG style RPG's. Ravensword or Aralon are great for western rpg style. For hack and slash diablo'ish games there are things like Solomon's Keep, Dungeon Hunter and Sacred Odyssey. And then of course there are the Square games like FF and Chaos Rings.
My examples of PvZ and WoG were simply about quality and polish...
My point was that there are games with depth if you look for them, most handheld gamers simply point to angry birds and claim everything on the iphone and ipad is a casual game without even bothering to see whats actually available (thats what I mean by uneducated). IMHO the proper controls argument is a bit like the people who dismissed the Wii with the same argument...in the end it didn't matter mainly because there are far more casual gamers than hardcore ones to cater to. That said, I've found that if done well "virtual controls" can work great...take SF IV for the iphone...for virtual controls they are fantastic but do take some practice to get used to, most "hardcore" gamers rather than feel like a "newb" choose to dismiss it as crap. There are also bluetooth based controllers finally starting to emerge, icade for instance will be out in around 8 weeks, though who knows how much support it will get because again the real money is in the masses.
Sorry should have clarified...my statement about depth was more in regards to things like Zenonia (1 and 2), Sacred Odyssey, Aralon, Neuroshima Hex, etc. But as for casual gaming i would put things like Espgaluda II, Pix ‘n Love Rush, Touch Grind, Contract Killer, Castle Warriors, Real Racing or Samurai 2 against most anything on the the other handhelds. Then there are games that started on other platforms but made a great transition...GTA Chinatown Wars, Street Fighter IV, Dead Space, Chaos Rings, Phoenix Wright, etc. While I agree the PSP was mainly designed for long gaming sessions (Which imho is why it came in last) the DS was highly slanted towards pick up and play type games. As for the physical media part...psp minis (many of which have actually been ported from ios) has shown they just dont get it...fieldrunners for instance is priced at 2x that of the ios version. Peggle on the DS was $30 on ios $2.99 and could have easily been a DS downloadable game. Size is a bit of a myth as well...the largest DS game was 512mb, the largest i have seen on the ipad was over a gig (Rage and Dead Space). 90% of PSP games have been well under 1gig as well.
I have no desire to see Sony or Nintendo fail, I just think the game is changing and dedicated handhelds are going to be harder sell to the masses, as a parent I can buy an ipod touch for $50-$75 less than a 3ds and its likely NGP will have an even bigger price gap, couple that with an average game price of a buck or two and its not hard to see ios making a severe dent in the market.
That entire piece is crap...anything which raises adrenaline will increase heartbeat and blood pressure. Gaming is an activity that some people really get into so of course its going to have that effect. Show me a gamer playing a fps or racing game that doesn't get higher blood pressure and pulse and I'll show you a gamer who's doing it wrong.
That said, sadly this is the first generation I have completely skipped a handheld release with no real intention of getting one at all. While I think the 3d thing is interesting and fairly innovative, I've been spoiled by iOS and Android and just cant see paying $40 for a game again. The counter to that is generally an uneducated response that android and ios games lack the depth of the Sony and Nintendo offerings but they are there if you look for them even in the RPG genre that Nintendo is famous for. I really do think Nintendo is going to be a world of hurt when it comes to handhelds, the price model myth has been disproven, look at World of Goo and Plants vs Zombies and its easy to see high quality games can sell and be very lucrative even at a lower price. Never underestimate the power of discreet gaming, you can carry around a phone or handheld as an adult and get in a few minutes of gaming here and there without so much as a glance, but employers tend to frown on adults bringing their DS or PSP to work with them.
While I agree that there is only so much you can really do with any level of practicality on a smartphone, the tablet and mid markets would benefit. IMHO the tablet market if taken advantage of could be a renaissance for tech companies. Computer and even console advancement while progressing from a tech standpoint has stagnated a bit on the consumer side, for basic functionality there is little difference to an end user from a 6 year old p4 and a modern quad core as far as the user experience goes mainly because mainstream computers are still using integrated graphics and much software still isnt taking advantage of multicores. Leapfrogging technologies like those in the Xoom and Ipad 2 are more easily demonstrable to end users and create the kind of buyer envy that used to exist when another couple hundreds of megahertz in performance actually made a noticeable difference.
I never said it was only video games my point was that its a highly violent form of media that parents pay far less attention to, I dont know if its ignorance or stupidity but I see it all the time. I know a neighbor of mine got really upset with me because her son caught a glimpse of the movie House of Wax when he was at my house with my kids waiting for his mother to get home. She completely freaked out that it was an "R" rated movie he was exposed to....then around christmas she was asking me to help her find a copy of CoD Black Ops since that was #1 on his list. I just think many parents tend to ignore gaming since after all its just a game...
Thats a good point, parents, friends and family can help curb that and help develop good well rounded people, but until society in general steps up to the plate those who dont have a good structure around them are basically destined to fail.
For quite a while I was an advocate of the idea that since I've played games for years and it hasn't had an effect on me that its not an issue. However, one cannot ignore a drastic change in the behavior of kids today, empathy being one of the biggest changes I have noticed. I have witnessed some truly horrible things that have happened at my kids schools that simply didn't happen or were even thought of when I was young. I can remember when I was a kid shooting a bird with a bb gun, I felt so guilty about it that I don't think I ever used that bb gun again, but here in my neighborhood we had a couple of kids going around and killing pets repeatedly and after being caught they laughed about it.
One difference I have realized that I had ignored previously is that I didn't grow up with even semi realistic games, in fact when I was a small child games didn't even exist beyond pong, space invaders, etc...in fact the most violent games I can remember were things like death race and boot hill. While I know one of the popular arguments has been that movies, tv and books have depicted violence since their beginnings, but there is a big difference that I think is ignored. In other media the person perpetuating the violence is someone else, in modern games even if the character is visually on screen its still the player directing their actions. As adults we are able to separate fantasy from reality, for kids thats not so clear. While I would never advocate banning games, I do think that children can be far more susceptible to influence than we want to believe. It should be a parents job to mold and guide their children, I know that I try to, but many parents don't which brings up the dilemma of how to deal with it when parents dont do their jobs. The easy answer is to blame bad parents but that doesn't fix problem and society is still left to deal with it.
I realize that many of the phone manufacturers might be upset with this but in the long run its going to help solidify Android as a viable platform. The upgrade game that many of them are playing now is downright scammish. I have a phone I spend nearly $600 on less than 8 months ago that has not been offered any sort of upgrade...instead the manufacturer offered up a new version of the phone, it wasn't a hardware issue, the new one is virtually identical internally, it appears the issue was simply...hey if we dont offer an upgrade we can sell them the new one. I felt burned enough by it that I switched to an iphone, i would have rather stayed with android but as the saying goes...screw me once shame on you...I wasn't setting myself up to get screwed again. The customized interfaces on vendor devices and lack of vendor support on upgrades is what has caused all the fragmentation, rooting and custom kernels to start with. In the end I guess it will hurt some manufacturers since the only real differences between devices will end up being the hardware itself but that also is good for consumers, it means they will have to up their game to compete and stay relevant.
Oddly enough I know more people with ipads than with Mac's....the "dedicated user base" excuse kinda ran out millions of tablets ago. Most hardcore mac people I know actually tend to dismiss the ipad as unnecessary and redundant, many people I see getting them are usually either replacing a netbook or cheap notebook or are getting their very first computing device. A good example, my sisters and I pitched in and picked up one for my grandmother (she is 90) she had a computer but never really figured it out and would only email and such is someone was there to help her with it. With the ipad she emails and looks at pictures, sends pictures and even plays the occasional game all by herself. I dont think its a market that exclusively Apples, but Apple has set the standard that others have to follow to have success, ease of use, fluid navigability and a near minimalistic interface take the fear out of computers for many...and in that Apple has managed to do a great job.
I think its more of a case where Apple managed to succeed in introducing a product that MS desperately tried and failed many time to bring to market before. I have an HP Tx1100 its 8 years old and actually is still fairly functional if it weren't for windows itself. MS just never did seem to grasp the concept that a desktop OS cant just be shoehorned onto a tablet form factor and work...for some things its great but overall the experience is desperately lacking. Not having to keep track of a stylus or read and navigate tiny menus that require precise taps to open ends up being a far bigger deal than anyone apparently thought. It looked like MS was finally figuring things out with Origami but after canning that and having their lead bail on the company it seems they have given up and replaced progress with sour grapes.
The problem is as you stated "some" android phones are fantastic. I just switched a couple weeks ago from a samsung galaxy s to an iphone 4 and had my largest client do the same. I just got sick of the lack of standardization with android. Supposedly Google is slowly making inroads at forcing some kind of uniformity and if it happens I'll be back but until then my job revolves around my phone and my clients phones, i like the assurance that at least for a few generations I will have regular updates, a consistent user experience, much less concern for malware, etc. Android is a great geek phone...If i had time to tweak and play with it., but as a business device the lack of consistency makes it far more of a pain than its worth.
And people wonder why fired IT workers are escorted to the door without being allowed to go back to their desks. All it takes is one idiot to make the rest of the company completely paranoid from that point forward. First rule of IT Staffing: When someone leaves...make sure their access leaves with them. The lack of backups however is inexcusable.
While I'd love to see the web create an enforceable red light district (it would make my job much easier and be easier for parents). Flat out banning the entire tld will just ensure that those wanting to get around the "ban" simply wont use it or maintain both.com and.xxx domains defeating its entire purpose.
So far the only major tech companies really known to be affected are:
Sony's camera division which has halted its assembly lines due to the rolling blackouts, it is concidering shifting production to other facilities temporarily.
Toshiba's LSI plant is offline they hope to be back up and running in about 3 weeks, they are offline due to damaged equipment. They have switched to alternate facitiles for its small screen manufacturing and do not expect shortages.
Canon's domestic camera production is offline due to a shortage of on hand parts but hopes to be back up and running by the end of this week.
Nikon has 4 plants that are offline but they are for its precision equipment division its camera and consumer products plants are in Taiwan.
Panasonic has several plants that handle optical sensors and camera gear offline in northern Japan there is no major damage but say they are waiting on infrastructure repair before resuming production.
Renesas Electronics, has resumed operations at their biggest plant of the seven affected but another six are offline, 15 of their other plants in japan are still up and running and were not affected by the Tsunami.
Shin-Etsu Chemical, the silicon wafer manufacturer that everyone is talking about has 2 of their plants offline but are trying to boost production at other plants to make up for any shortfalls.
Nimoy has not aged well at all...well I mean i guess he has aged alright for 80 but he started looking 80 twenty years ago. Shatner I gotta say looks pretty damn good for his age. Now the one who seems to have really been blessed with youth genes are Nichelle Nichols and George Takei. She is still beautiful and he looks like he could easiy pass for 50.
The wild west days were great and all but as long as their is worldwide connectivity there are going to be walls and barriers in different countries and on different platforms, there is simply no other way short of some utopian one world society to do it any other way. America's rules are different from China's, China's are different from Austrailia, etc.
The walled garden and boutique services such as the iphone and certain isp's are usually joined by choice not by requirement. In the past we actually had more of those but they were a requirement rather than a choice. I can remember the days of Lynx and Gopher when nearly every destination was a password away. Information is really much freer now but the concept of censorship and walled gardens have come more to the forefront because the information actually exists online now where before bits and pieces were there but most of it was unobtainable to the masses.
Looks like he's doing well on both the living long and the prospering parts...hope there are many years to go. Anyone else think that Raw Nerve is the best thing Shatner has ever done? I love Captain Kirk and Denny Crane but raw nerve is a damn entertaining format, rarely do you see an interview type show where by the end of it you feel like you actually got to know the person a little bit...Raw Nerve does that just about every time, its more like listening in on a conversation at another table more than watching an interview and I really appreciate that.
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Who in their right mind would subject themselves to advertising for the life of a product to save a measly $25. One would think that after the success of the Kindle and its proprietary nature they would be able to approach advertisers and offer a rather large captive audience that is fully trackable and work out a deal to basically give kindles away....that would have impressive and could have worked to make kindles as ubiquitous as television.
That doesn't matter though...what matters is the exact product in question is what has to have certification, subset, superset even a simple version change doesn't matter they all have to be submitted for certification, google hadn't done that yet claimed it had...yes it was a "technicality" but in the eyes of the govt. and their sometimes ridiculous processes an important one.
Sure how about zenonia 1 and 2, Rimelands, Across Age DX, Hybrid Eternal Whisper and Hybrid 2 are great for JRPG style RPG's. Ravensword or Aralon are great for western rpg style. For hack and slash diablo'ish games there are things like Solomon's Keep, Dungeon Hunter and Sacred Odyssey. And then of course there are the Square games like FF and Chaos Rings.
My examples of PvZ and WoG were simply about quality and polish...
My point was that there are games with depth if you look for them, most handheld gamers simply point to angry birds and claim everything on the iphone and ipad is a casual game without even bothering to see whats actually available (thats what I mean by uneducated). IMHO the proper controls argument is a bit like the people who dismissed the Wii with the same argument...in the end it didn't matter mainly because there are far more casual gamers than hardcore ones to cater to. That said, I've found that if done well "virtual controls" can work great...take SF IV for the iphone...for virtual controls they are fantastic but do take some practice to get used to, most "hardcore" gamers rather than feel like a "newb" choose to dismiss it as crap. There are also bluetooth based controllers finally starting to emerge, icade for instance will be out in around 8 weeks, though who knows how much support it will get because again the real money is in the masses.
Sorry should have clarified...my statement about depth was more in regards to things like Zenonia (1 and 2), Sacred Odyssey, Aralon, Neuroshima Hex, etc. But as for casual gaming i would put things like Espgaluda II, Pix ‘n Love Rush, Touch Grind, Contract Killer, Castle Warriors, Real Racing or Samurai 2 against most anything on the the other handhelds. Then there are games that started on other platforms but made a great transition...GTA Chinatown Wars, Street Fighter IV, Dead Space, Chaos Rings, Phoenix Wright, etc. While I agree the PSP was mainly designed for long gaming sessions (Which imho is why it came in last) the DS was highly slanted towards pick up and play type games. As for the physical media part...psp minis (many of which have actually been ported from ios) has shown they just dont get it...fieldrunners for instance is priced at 2x that of the ios version. Peggle on the DS was $30 on ios $2.99 and could have easily been a DS downloadable game. Size is a bit of a myth as well...the largest DS game was 512mb, the largest i have seen on the ipad was over a gig (Rage and Dead Space). 90% of PSP games have been well under 1gig as well.
I have no desire to see Sony or Nintendo fail, I just think the game is changing and dedicated handhelds are going to be harder sell to the masses, as a parent I can buy an ipod touch for $50-$75 less than a 3ds and its likely NGP will have an even bigger price gap, couple that with an average game price of a buck or two and its not hard to see ios making a severe dent in the market.
That entire piece is crap...anything which raises adrenaline will increase heartbeat and blood pressure. Gaming is an activity that some people really get into so of course its going to have that effect. Show me a gamer playing a fps or racing game that doesn't get higher blood pressure and pulse and I'll show you a gamer who's doing it wrong.
That said, sadly this is the first generation I have completely skipped a handheld release with no real intention of getting one at all. While I think the 3d thing is interesting and fairly innovative, I've been spoiled by iOS and Android and just cant see paying $40 for a game again. The counter to that is generally an uneducated response that android and ios games lack the depth of the Sony and Nintendo offerings but they are there if you look for them even in the RPG genre that Nintendo is famous for. I really do think Nintendo is going to be a world of hurt when it comes to handhelds, the price model myth has been disproven, look at World of Goo and Plants vs Zombies and its easy to see high quality games can sell and be very lucrative even at a lower price. Never underestimate the power of discreet gaming, you can carry around a phone or handheld as an adult and get in a few minutes of gaming here and there without so much as a glance, but employers tend to frown on adults bringing their DS or PSP to work with them.
While I agree that there is only so much you can really do with any level of practicality on a smartphone, the tablet and mid markets would benefit. IMHO the tablet market if taken advantage of could be a renaissance for tech companies. Computer and even console advancement while progressing from a tech standpoint has stagnated a bit on the consumer side, for basic functionality there is little difference to an end user from a 6 year old p4 and a modern quad core as far as the user experience goes mainly because mainstream computers are still using integrated graphics and much software still isnt taking advantage of multicores. Leapfrogging technologies like those in the Xoom and Ipad 2 are more easily demonstrable to end users and create the kind of buyer envy that used to exist when another couple hundreds of megahertz in performance actually made a noticeable difference.
I never said it was only video games my point was that its a highly violent form of media that parents pay far less attention to, I dont know if its ignorance or stupidity but I see it all the time. I know a neighbor of mine got really upset with me because her son caught a glimpse of the movie House of Wax when he was at my house with my kids waiting for his mother to get home. She completely freaked out that it was an "R" rated movie he was exposed to....then around christmas she was asking me to help her find a copy of CoD Black Ops since that was #1 on his list. I just think many parents tend to ignore gaming since after all its just a game...
Thats a good point, parents, friends and family can help curb that and help develop good well rounded people, but until society in general steps up to the plate those who dont have a good structure around them are basically destined to fail.
For quite a while I was an advocate of the idea that since I've played games for years and it hasn't had an effect on me that its not an issue. However, one cannot ignore a drastic change in the behavior of kids today, empathy being one of the biggest changes I have noticed. I have witnessed some truly horrible things that have happened at my kids schools that simply didn't happen or were even thought of when I was young. I can remember when I was a kid shooting a bird with a bb gun, I felt so guilty about it that I don't think I ever used that bb gun again, but here in my neighborhood we had a couple of kids going around and killing pets repeatedly and after being caught they laughed about it.
One difference I have realized that I had ignored previously is that I didn't grow up with even semi realistic games, in fact when I was a small child games didn't even exist beyond pong, space invaders, etc...in fact the most violent games I can remember were things like death race and boot hill. While I know one of the popular arguments has been that movies, tv and books have depicted violence since their beginnings, but there is a big difference that I think is ignored. In other media the person perpetuating the violence is someone else, in modern games even if the character is visually on screen its still the player directing their actions. As adults we are able to separate fantasy from reality, for kids thats not so clear. While I would never advocate banning games, I do think that children can be far more susceptible to influence than we want to believe. It should be a parents job to mold and guide their children, I know that I try to, but many parents don't which brings up the dilemma of how to deal with it when parents dont do their jobs. The easy answer is to blame bad parents but that doesn't fix problem and society is still left to deal with it.
I realize that many of the phone manufacturers might be upset with this but in the long run its going to help solidify Android as a viable platform. The upgrade game that many of them are playing now is downright scammish. I have a phone I spend nearly $600 on less than 8 months ago that has not been offered any sort of upgrade...instead the manufacturer offered up a new version of the phone, it wasn't a hardware issue, the new one is virtually identical internally, it appears the issue was simply...hey if we dont offer an upgrade we can sell them the new one. I felt burned enough by it that I switched to an iphone, i would have rather stayed with android but as the saying goes...screw me once shame on you...I wasn't setting myself up to get screwed again. The customized interfaces on vendor devices and lack of vendor support on upgrades is what has caused all the fragmentation, rooting and custom kernels to start with. In the end I guess it will hurt some manufacturers since the only real differences between devices will end up being the hardware itself but that also is good for consumers, it means they will have to up their game to compete and stay relevant.
Oddly enough I know more people with ipads than with Mac's....the "dedicated user base" excuse kinda ran out millions of tablets ago. Most hardcore mac people I know actually tend to dismiss the ipad as unnecessary and redundant, many people I see getting them are usually either replacing a netbook or cheap notebook or are getting their very first computing device. A good example, my sisters and I pitched in and picked up one for my grandmother (she is 90) she had a computer but never really figured it out and would only email and such is someone was there to help her with it. With the ipad she emails and looks at pictures, sends pictures and even plays the occasional game all by herself. I dont think its a market that exclusively Apples, but Apple has set the standard that others have to follow to have success, ease of use, fluid navigability and a near minimalistic interface take the fear out of computers for many...and in that Apple has managed to do a great job.
I think its more of a case where Apple managed to succeed in introducing a product that MS desperately tried and failed many time to bring to market before. I have an HP Tx1100 its 8 years old and actually is still fairly functional if it weren't for windows itself. MS just never did seem to grasp the concept that a desktop OS cant just be shoehorned onto a tablet form factor and work...for some things its great but overall the experience is desperately lacking. Not having to keep track of a stylus or read and navigate tiny menus that require precise taps to open ends up being a far bigger deal than anyone apparently thought. It looked like MS was finally figuring things out with Origami but after canning that and having their lead bail on the company it seems they have given up and replaced progress with sour grapes.
Really? So amateur radio won out over commercial radio, ota won out over cable and linux won the desktop wars? I must be living in a mirror universe.
The problem is as you stated "some" android phones are fantastic. I just switched a couple weeks ago from a samsung galaxy s to an iphone 4 and had my largest client do the same. I just got sick of the lack of standardization with android. Supposedly Google is slowly making inroads at forcing some kind of uniformity and if it happens I'll be back but until then my job revolves around my phone and my clients phones, i like the assurance that at least for a few generations I will have regular updates, a consistent user experience, much less concern for malware, etc. Android is a great geek phone...If i had time to tweak and play with it., but as a business device the lack of consistency makes it far more of a pain than its worth.
And people wonder why fired IT workers are escorted to the door without being allowed to go back to their desks. All it takes is one idiot to make the rest of the company completely paranoid from that point forward. First rule of IT Staffing: When someone leaves...make sure their access leaves with them. The lack of backups however is inexcusable.
They aren't going to bother with banning the book...they are just going to rewrite it...
http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project
While I'd love to see the web create an enforceable red light district (it would make my job much easier and be easier for parents). Flat out banning the entire tld will just ensure that those wanting to get around the "ban" simply wont use it or maintain both .com and .xxx domains defeating its entire purpose.
From what I have read sales are still declining, if they have managed to make a sizable dent in piracy, what will they have left to blame it on?
So far the only major tech companies really known to be affected are:
Sony's camera division which has halted its assembly lines due to the rolling blackouts, it is concidering shifting production to other facilities temporarily.
Toshiba's LSI plant is offline they hope to be back up and running in about 3 weeks, they are offline due to damaged equipment. They have switched to alternate facitiles for its small screen manufacturing and do not expect shortages.
Canon's domestic camera production is offline due to a shortage of on hand parts but hopes to be back up and running by the end of this week.
Nikon has 4 plants that are offline but they are for its precision equipment division its camera and consumer products plants are in Taiwan.
Panasonic has several plants that handle optical sensors and camera gear offline in northern Japan there is no major damage but say they are waiting on infrastructure repair before resuming production.
Renesas Electronics, has resumed operations at their biggest plant of the seven affected but another six are offline, 15 of their other plants in japan are still up and running and were not affected by the Tsunami.
Shin-Etsu Chemical, the silicon wafer manufacturer that everyone is talking about has 2 of their plants offline but are trying to boost production at other plants to make up for any shortfalls.
Didn't that also result in a bunch of lawsuits over collusion though? Thats where the whole RAMBUS debacle started if I remember correctly.
That depends on which side of the nexus you are in.
Nimoy has not aged well at all...well I mean i guess he has aged alright for 80 but he started looking 80 twenty years ago. Shatner I gotta say looks pretty damn good for his age. Now the one who seems to have really been blessed with youth genes are Nichelle Nichols and George Takei. She is still beautiful and he looks like he could easiy pass for 50.
The wild west days were great and all but as long as their is worldwide connectivity there are going to be walls and barriers in different countries and on different platforms, there is simply no other way short of some utopian one world society to do it any other way. America's rules are different from China's, China's are different from Austrailia, etc.
The walled garden and boutique services such as the iphone and certain isp's are usually joined by choice not by requirement. In the past we actually had more of those but they were a requirement rather than a choice. I can remember the days of Lynx and Gopher when nearly every destination was a password away. Information is really much freer now but the concept of censorship and walled gardens have come more to the forefront because the information actually exists online now where before bits and pieces were there but most of it was unobtainable to the masses.
Looks like he's doing well on both the living long and the prospering parts...hope there are many years to go. Anyone else think that Raw Nerve is the best thing Shatner has ever done? I love Captain Kirk and Denny Crane but raw nerve is a damn entertaining format, rarely do you see an interview type show where by the end of it you feel like you actually got to know the person a little bit...Raw Nerve does that just about every time, its more like listening in on a conversation at another table more than watching an interview and I really appreciate that.