While the main universe Captain America may be dead the thing being ignored is that the Ultimate universe Captain America is still, apparently, alive. It's just that since Mark Millar is so busy writing the excerable Civil War (although, honestly, I haven't read it, I avoid these cross-overs like the plague) and never managing to get it out on time that he can't be bothered to not write The Ultimates and fail to get it out on time.
Joss, however, actually has kept her dead. Now, Colossus - who was supposed to be completely and utterly dead forever with no chance of ever coming back not even as a zombie in an alternate-reality dream - he brought back, but Jean's staying out of the picture, I suspect, so long as Joss is writing Amazing.
While it has some good points there were a few that really felt to be antithetical to the way I prefer to enjoy a good FPS.
First off was the idea that you need to always be under pressure. I acknowledge that some people think this makes a game fun. I remember playing a number of multiplayer mods for Quake where you'd get insta-gibbed if you stood still for too long. Yet I don't like this sort of frantic, don't pay attention to what you're doing and don't plan or think, just move around a lot concept. I like to be able to take a slow, methodical approach to the game. If I think there might be enemies nearby then I'm more likely to hold down the walk key... slink around slowly to keep my noise down and my aim steady and spend my time checking out every corner. I'm just about the only person I know who walked most of the time when I played Sonic the Hedgehog for fear of missing something or running into an enemy accidentally.
Related to this is the idea that you always need multiple ways to get somewhere. While I greatly applaud not having a single forced path and giving the player a degree of freedom I find that when misapplied it can be even more crippling. Give me two or three paths to a destination and I'm likely to go a little bit down one path, checking it out, then stop, turn around, and go back to check out the other path. After I'm done with any fights I'll probably wander back around and be certain I checked out everything along both paths. Not only to avoid having missed any powerups or weapons or such, but because I'll feel a bit cheated if I don't. While I like multiple playthroughs of a game (though I'll gladly play a linear game many, many times, just the same as I'll gladly watch a movie or read a book a good dozen or so times) I want to experience everything I possibly can the first time through. If not, I feel like I'm missing out on something. I want to see all the possible content and not miss a thing. The difference comes when you go beyond just two or three possible paths and begin to make it really open: e.g. Grand Theft Auto or other "sandbox" style games. At that point there isn't really a path except the one you make and I don't worry that I missed something by taking the left path over the right. Sure I'll worry a bit that maybe there was a better way. Maybe I could have snuck around in some other manner, but I'm generally ok in believing that I saw what there was and made my own choices.
Finally, the idea that you need to be thrown right into the action buts against my generally laid-back, methodical method of play. I want to slow down in the beginning. Learn about the world and the characters. Get a chance to test out my weapons a bit. Figure out the lay of the land and get a feel for my new persona. Throwing the player right into the thick of things makes me anxious and ill-prepared. It's an unpleasant feeling that makes me cringe and curl up inside. Then again, I'm the sort who always, always reads the entire manual from cover-to-cover before I even load up a game. Not reading the manual is unthinkable. How else do you know how to play it? How do you know what's going on? There's no room for "just learn as you go and fiddle around with things". Maybe, to a degree, in an adventure game where the rule is to explore (although you should still be taught the basic commands and how the parser/control scheme works and have the stage set for you if it isn't done entirely in-game), but that's a special case.
Ultimately this is only "how to make a better FPS for a specific type of fan". Some of the design ideas are solid, but these are far from the maxims they intend to be.
Personally I felt that these sequence, while done very well, was more confusing than anything. You were thrust into a plot with little to no warning and immediately expected to understand what was going on and side with these rebels or something that you know little to nothing about against an enemy you also know little to nothing about.
I felt that, compared to the plot of the first game with it's more easily understood "Get out. Oh NOES, they want to to cover it all up! Escape!" theme worked much better at accomplishing the same thing.
Actually, that they knew they were breaking the law is up in the air right now. Much of the legal proceedings on this are focused around the concept of whether this is or is not illegal. The intent of the law (again, as expressed in the minority opinion) is that no, the law was written poorly and was not intended to address this sort of issue, only when someone over 18 is taking the pictures for exploitative purposes.
Moving outside this for a moment, have you ever engaged in behavior that was illegal? Speeding? Ever broken a sodomy law (keeping in mind that until a few years ago oral and anal sex were banned in many states regardless of the sexual orientation of those involved)? Did you ever have sex before you were 18? Hell, did you ever want to, but were otherwise unable to procure a willing partner? If so, please report for the punishment you clearly deserve as you should have been aware of the consequences of your actions at the time. It doesn't matter whether the law was right (c'mon, who ever thought that it was considered acceptable to break the law with the explicit intent of challenging an unjust law via judicial review?) or not, you should have known better beforehand. Especially since you should have realized that engaging in a private matter came with the understanding that someone else might find out and find you in violation of a technicality of the law.
While I see (although I do disagree with) you opinion, it is not entirely relevant to this particular case. In this case the claim that these kids "knew it was against the law" is not the point. The point is that they are being prosecuted in a manner that is inconsistent with the intent of the law (and, while IANAL, the minority opinion supports this). These are laws that are designed to prosecute people that prey on children. When we move into post-pubescence, though we often encounter a host of different problems (and part of the problem behind failing to legally distinguish between pedophilia and ephebophilia along with a host of other related issues): is this a relationship between a teen and an adult and generally considered to be the case that the teen knows what they're doing (unlike in most pedophilic interactions) but in which the teen is making poor decisions and generally being manipulated? Or is this the case of, as in this case, two teens of similar age doing what comes naturally to... well, by definition every post-pubescent.
This distinction is critical because in the first two cases we are dealing with adults taking advantage of (either intentionally or not) someone younger than them. In the latter situation we do not have that same problem. The law is clearly focused merely on preventing the former scenario. This would be tantamount to prosecuting a 17 year-old for owning a naked picture of himself. If he looks at himself naked in the mirror is he getting a hot one-on-one live sex show?
Further, to put this in the context of your statements, that parents will be held legally accountable for the actions of their children, this entire issue isn't at all relevant. True, you focus almost exclusively on teen pregnancies which are a slightly different issue, but in this case there is no parental liability. These were photographs made in private for personal use. Thus, according to your reasoning -"if 'someone else' is held accountable for the actions of a 17 year old, that 'someone else' gets to dictate the rules" - my interpretation would be that the person being held legally responsible is to be provided with decision-making authority. Since there is no parental accountability in this case the parents would have no right to dictate whether the teens can or cannot do this.
I think that older games actually had walls all the time. Think back to Contra, for example. While definitely one of the harder games, it certainly didn't affect sales much. You played the game and accepted that you probably weren't going to make it to the end. Beating a game was an accomplishment that took time and effort, not a natural expectation like finishing a book. Beating it meant that you were finally good enough to win.
Was it frustrating? Yes, at times it was pretty irritating. At the same time, games weren't measured in length the way they often are today. It's not a question of putting in more levels just to extend playtime. To go back to Contra you can play through it in what, 30 minutes to an hour? But is that really the actual play-time?
This is only a very recent issue. In the past the game was supposed to be hard. Hell, most games only have 10 levels or so total. The point was that the game was a challenge. You kept playing and playing and playing and trying to advance. Eventually you'd get better and slowly advance in the game. The people who beat games didn't do so because the makers intended everyone to get to the end, but because they had mastered the game.
Then again in those days (generally) you couldn't save your game. Also, this is not a blanket case and applies mainly to action games rather than adventure, RPG, or the like. This is also largely due to many earlier games having descended from arcade games where this was really the only way to handle a game.
Partially this represents a shift in the attitudes of game developers/audiences. Gaming has become more like a movie or book where you tell a story and mediate an experience. The older, challenge based area of action gaming has generally been given over to online multiplayer gaming where the challenge is constant and dynamic... but you'll never really be able to say that you're good enough to beat it.
Basically, what I'm saying is maybe we shouldn't harshly grade games based on the idea that everyone should be able to just play it straight through, but perhaps, we should accept that sometimes you just need to practice and get better... not cheat or demand easier games.
Then again, when there's some damn jumping puzzle that just makes a single part of a game unreasonably hard for no good reason that's just bad design and always has been.
Yes, but also the problem in asking "Why haven't you bought a next-gen system?" isn't a valid question yet. Sure people want to say that last-gen systems are the real winners here, but until everyone who wants a Wii can get one, the lack of supply is a valid impediment to learning anything from the question. One which really wants to hear: "The PS3 is unreasonably expensive/has no good games." or "Microsoft sucks and it'll be a cold day in hell before I give them any cash for that damn 360 (even if it finally has managed to secure some decent games, unlike the original which was mainly a place for PC ports, among which Halo was a notable example of a PC game that was only good enough for console gamers;) ).
Part of the data is problematic as the Wii is still selling very strongly. Months after launch and while PS3s are starting to pile up and reach the level where you can just go into a store and buy one, the Wii is still a mixture of luck and/or staking out the store.
Given this information many people are waiting for a price drop on the PS3 and some good games to come out (I know I have an interest in it, but it's definitely a secondary console to me and the price will have to come waaay down), but most people with an interest in a Wii simply haven't been able to buy one yet making sales figures largely meaningless at this point in time. A better idea would be to chart the number produced along with the number sold-through to consumers and fill in the intermedian space. Graphing this since release date would begin to show which system is holding up in available sales.
Actually have jobs that you want to hire people for. Giving away other free things or trying to put on some silly show isn't the point. People go to job fairs because they want a job. Take resumes and try to call people back the next day for interviews if at all possible.
Trust me. Right now I'm almost two years out of college with degrees in biology and microbiology and two years of undergraduate research and I'm still looking for a job. The only thing I want from a company is a paying position there.
I understand your anger. Seriously, this must have sucked for you guys. The problem is that all of the responses I'm hearing are basically along the lines of "I live in Boston and this was a huge pain in the ass for me so these guys are total bastards who should have known better." The problem is that Boston was the only city out of ten that had a problem as a result of this. So yeah, I can sympathize that you're pissed, but be pissed at the police and their overblown response to it. They overreacted to a fucking lite-brite simply because they didn't recognize the character on it. And yeah, it was pretty stupid from the perspective of an ad, even for guerrilla marketing, since there was no way for anyone who wasn't already in the know to take anything away from it. The best they could have hoped for was a friend who said "Oh, it's a reference to a show that you don't watch"
In short it's not about whether this was a good ad campaign, how clever the people who put it together think they are, or how badly inconvenienced you are and want someone to lash out at in response (may I suggest... hmm... Iraq? Oh wait, they're not the hip scapegoat and Afghanistan is so old it's coming up on retro-cool for mindless backlashes... maybe get in on the ground floor and take it out on Iran?) it's about the fear that anything you don't immediately understand is supposedly a threat (ah... the American Way!) and the post-9/11 fear culture that terrorists are everywhere just waiting to strike (a fun twist on all that excitingly retro Red Scare paranoia!).
Accept that Boston was the only place where anyone even remotely gave a shit about this, blame your local cops, and get over it.
Surprisingly only Boston had a problem with this when TFA mentions that these are up in 9 other cities. Likewise I've only heard Boston-based posters complaining about how this was irresponsible and something that obviously looked a lot like a bomb so it needed to be investigated.
This was, well, like 5 years ago now, but he was the only professor like this. Actually, he wasn't a professor proper, but some lesser class of instructor who had his masters from the same damn school. While you make a valid point (and from most professors I'd have been fine with it) he was just a dick, plain and simple. He also had some strong views about how programming should be an assembly-line job and often failed to know basic things about crap he tried to force on the class. Most of my other CS professors were good and almost all of my biology profs (my major, CS was just a minor) were excellent.
It wasn't any real challenge (c'mon, this was basic Java and since it's cross-platform it was never an issue how I got it done as long as I got it done) to just do it my own way. The point was that some CS profs are just arrogant asshats, regardless of your gender.
My girlfriend, a biologist, took the CS intro class (based on Java as was the entire CS program) when we were in college and didn't have to put up with any of that. I'm willing to bet that your experience was an isolated experience based on your campus alone... though I'm not discounting it entirely as there are assholes everywhere.
Personally I found the professor to be an unqualified and pompous jackass whose only goal was to teach people that a "...For Dummies" programming style and slavish desire to corporate conformity were where it's at. The guy cared more about slamming Unix compared to Windows and "professional" programming and bitching that if you wanted to be a "hacker" (I'm amazed he even knew the proper meaning) to drop the class and take a C course instead (good advice, if only a C course were available and his wasn't a pre-requisite to everything else in the CS program). So it's not like the guy was particularly nice to begin with. He didn't give a shit if you were a girl, just if you wanted to write your code in vi.
I see your point and on a purely economic level it has merits. However, at a practical level if Sony goes to market with a device that sells at exactly the rate of supply to demand (for the unit at that price point) with a ludicrously high initial price the market perception will be that the PS3 is an unreasonably expensive device (as even their current price has done) which shuts off the consumer interest and with a decrease in consumer interest (which will be quite hard to regain) you also lose interest from software providers which will make or break a system. One of the main reasons I've stuck by Nintendo for so long is due to the quality of their first-party exclusive software which is often vastly superior to exclusive titles on other consoles.
Thus while Sony would make a bit of extra money at launch rather than sell-outs (which only tend to make an object appear more desirable to consumers) they would ultimately lose customers in the long run. Not only due to public perception that the system is overpriced (which, as stated earlier has already seriously affected Sony) and resulting in loss of interest, but by slowly lowering the price in order to strictly control the market and only selling to the next-wealthiest (or merely those with poor money/sense ratios) group of potential consumers they would alienate the market as well by conducting business in a fashion that consumers associate as being money-grubbing and sleazy.
Again, from a point of view based on pure economics and with a constant rate of demand that curves based on price this works and your analysis is correct. When viewed with the more social, malleable factors of marketing though it doesn't hold up.
The problem is that while sellouts occurred on both sides the Wii had a greater supply to sell out of. I greatly suspect that the PS3 might not have sold out if they hadn't had a seriously limited supply. Their demand vs. price curve is very gentle until the price comes down by a few hundred dollars. While I still think that Sony is doing things the wrong way they have been able to sell a lot of units at a ridiculously high price. Unless their heads are completely up their asses (very likely though that may be) the prices will start coming down as supply starts going up. This means that only the die-hards who just have to have it out of the gate will buy it now, but sales to the masses won't cause undue demand until the supply is able to support it.
Personally I still think the Wii is the best of the systems and not just because I'm a Nintendo fanboy who only bought a non-Nintendo console for the first time last Summer (a PS2 incidentally... time to cash in on all those great titles that I missed). The level of adoption seems much more likely as well based not only on obvious demand by consumers, but because of the vastly lower price.
While I realize that there are always going to be issues with this sort of thing "anyone who wants one" is a bit off the mark at the moment. I'd be interested in one (though, not until I get a Wii), but not at the current price.
Sony has set their pricing such that they have massively decreased demand largely on the basis of price alone. Bring it down to a more reasonable level... hell, even $400 (for the 60 GB) would be more reasonable given the current price and sales would start picking up. People want it, they just don't happen to have a spare grand lying around taking up space.
I know it's high. I'm paying $1200 on a 1 bedroom apartment (a basement place about a block from the Daly City BART, but just barely within city limits) shared with my girlfriend. For comparisons I was paying about $600 for a larger two bedroom apartment in a well-managed complex with in-unit washer/dryer, dishwasher, included cable TV, and pool before moving. That was in a small, college town in Kansas (Manhattan, KS to be exact) though where that was at the high end of the scale.
At the same time though I've found that the majority of other basic living expenses (e.g. food) tend to be roughly equivalent to what I was paying previously. I've only lived here for a few months and while things are more expensive in general, in my experience most basic services are only slightly higher if at all.
Personally I see the appeal, but it feels like this service will only be used in two ways: 1)people who want to use it to get online while wandering around town or to provide connectivity for ultra-portable devices (e.g. PDAs, DS, etc.) 2)low-income Internet availability. From the way I've heard it pushed (I haven't been to any of the community meetings so this is mainly what I've read online and in the Guardian) this is exactly the way they've been trying to sell it. Bleeding-hearts can claim that they're helping the poor get online while the rest of us will still pay for broadband at home and use it occasionally rather than paying some jackass coffee house to get access. Seriously, why do I almost only find places that want to charge me to get online? Hell, when I was in college elsewhere the local pizza place and a bunch of bars had wifi for free... it was just a smart move on behalf of businesses to spend $40 a month on broadband and install an access point just to grab extra business.
I respectfully disagree. It has appeared to me that the market really wants HD TVs. The problem is that they're expensive and since they already have a TV at the moment the purchase is often delayed.
The fact that many of these same people often stretch SD TV, poorly calibrate the image, and do all sorts of other things to their displays that show that they have little regard for quality still bothers me, but they do want them and are willing to buy them.
For the record I am a biologist and specifically a cancer geneticist and while I only graduated recently this is something that I can't recall ever having discussed. Not even in a course devoted to the biology of cancer cells.
At the same time it makes almost perfect sense as a potentially important paradigm shift in how we think about cancer and, from the perspective of this article, how we treat cancers.
Essentially the way cancers were currently thought to function is that normal, differentiated cells sometimes just go bad. A skin cell, for example, becomes mutated over time, perhaps by exposure to radiation (e.g. UV radiation from the sun) and the cumulative effect of those mutations causes it to spiral out of control. First the cell becomes able to divide again, something that differentiated cells don't typically do. Second the cell loses the proper controls over when and how it should replicate. Finally the cell becomes resistant to the typical means by which aberrant cells are destroyed naturally by the body. That's what cancer is in a nutshell, a cell that shouldn't be growing, growing out of control with no regard to the needs of other cells, and with a resistance to the body's normal methods of stopping it.
This theory states that instead of a normal, differentiated skin cell like the mainstream has typically assumed is responsible it is instead a stem cell: one of the undifferentiated cells that is naturally capable of unlimited replication. While the layman can see that this takes out one of the three necessary steps for a cell to become cancerous (thus reducing the total number of mutations needed) the greater issue (at least as posed in this article) is that if these cells are the root cause of cancer we have been investing too heavily in the wrong kinds of treatment. Instead of going for large-scale destruction of the entire tumor mass (an important consideration regardless) we need to be focusing on destroying the ringleader stem cells that produce sub-cells that produce the tumor mass.
If you think of it like an RTS game the stem cells are the factory producing the tanks. Sure if you destroy all of the tanks it'll make the problem go away for a while (remission), but if you don't hunt down and destroy what's causing the tanks to be produced you're just going to have to deal with another rush (relapse) of tanks in the future.
This theory hypothesizes that this is the reason why it will often appear that the totality of the cancer is gone, but a relapse will happen in the future. It's because the cancerous stem cell was not destroyed.
Slashdot Mirror
While the main universe Captain America may be dead the thing being ignored is that the Ultimate universe Captain America is still, apparently, alive. It's just that since Mark Millar is so busy writing the excerable Civil War (although, honestly, I haven't read it, I avoid these cross-overs like the plague) and never managing to get it out on time that he can't be bothered to not write The Ultimates and fail to get it out on time.
Joss, however, actually has kept her dead. Now, Colossus - who was supposed to be completely and utterly dead forever with no chance of ever coming back not even as a zombie in an alternate-reality dream - he brought back, but Jean's staying out of the picture, I suspect, so long as Joss is writing Amazing.
While it has some good points there were a few that really felt to be antithetical to the way I prefer to enjoy a good FPS.
First off was the idea that you need to always be under pressure. I acknowledge that some people think this makes a game fun. I remember playing a number of multiplayer mods for Quake where you'd get insta-gibbed if you stood still for too long. Yet I don't like this sort of frantic, don't pay attention to what you're doing and don't plan or think, just move around a lot concept. I like to be able to take a slow, methodical approach to the game. If I think there might be enemies nearby then I'm more likely to hold down the walk key... slink around slowly to keep my noise down and my aim steady and spend my time checking out every corner. I'm just about the only person I know who walked most of the time when I played Sonic the Hedgehog for fear of missing something or running into an enemy accidentally.
Related to this is the idea that you always need multiple ways to get somewhere. While I greatly applaud not having a single forced path and giving the player a degree of freedom I find that when misapplied it can be even more crippling. Give me two or three paths to a destination and I'm likely to go a little bit down one path, checking it out, then stop, turn around, and go back to check out the other path. After I'm done with any fights I'll probably wander back around and be certain I checked out everything along both paths. Not only to avoid having missed any powerups or weapons or such, but because I'll feel a bit cheated if I don't. While I like multiple playthroughs of a game (though I'll gladly play a linear game many, many times, just the same as I'll gladly watch a movie or read a book a good dozen or so times) I want to experience everything I possibly can the first time through. If not, I feel like I'm missing out on something. I want to see all the possible content and not miss a thing. The difference comes when you go beyond just two or three possible paths and begin to make it really open: e.g. Grand Theft Auto or other "sandbox" style games. At that point there isn't really a path except the one you make and I don't worry that I missed something by taking the left path over the right. Sure I'll worry a bit that maybe there was a better way. Maybe I could have snuck around in some other manner, but I'm generally ok in believing that I saw what there was and made my own choices.
Finally, the idea that you need to be thrown right into the action buts against my generally laid-back, methodical method of play. I want to slow down in the beginning. Learn about the world and the characters. Get a chance to test out my weapons a bit. Figure out the lay of the land and get a feel for my new persona. Throwing the player right into the thick of things makes me anxious and ill-prepared. It's an unpleasant feeling that makes me cringe and curl up inside. Then again, I'm the sort who always, always reads the entire manual from cover-to-cover before I even load up a game. Not reading the manual is unthinkable. How else do you know how to play it? How do you know what's going on? There's no room for "just learn as you go and fiddle around with things". Maybe, to a degree, in an adventure game where the rule is to explore (although you should still be taught the basic commands and how the parser/control scheme works and have the stage set for you if it isn't done entirely in-game), but that's a special case.
Ultimately this is only "how to make a better FPS for a specific type of fan". Some of the design ideas are solid, but these are far from the maxims they intend to be.
Personally I felt that these sequence, while done very well, was more confusing than anything. You were thrust into a plot with little to no warning and immediately expected to understand what was going on and side with these rebels or something that you know little to nothing about against an enemy you also know little to nothing about.
I felt that, compared to the plot of the first game with it's more easily understood "Get out. Oh NOES, they want to to cover it all up! Escape!" theme worked much better at accomplishing the same thing.
Actually, that they knew they were breaking the law is up in the air right now. Much of the legal proceedings on this are focused around the concept of whether this is or is not illegal. The intent of the law (again, as expressed in the minority opinion) is that no, the law was written poorly and was not intended to address this sort of issue, only when someone over 18 is taking the pictures for exploitative purposes.
Moving outside this for a moment, have you ever engaged in behavior that was illegal? Speeding? Ever broken a sodomy law (keeping in mind that until a few years ago oral and anal sex were banned in many states regardless of the sexual orientation of those involved)? Did you ever have sex before you were 18? Hell, did you ever want to, but were otherwise unable to procure a willing partner? If so, please report for the punishment you clearly deserve as you should have been aware of the consequences of your actions at the time. It doesn't matter whether the law was right (c'mon, who ever thought that it was considered acceptable to break the law with the explicit intent of challenging an unjust law via judicial review?) or not, you should have known better beforehand. Especially since you should have realized that engaging in a private matter came with the understanding that someone else might find out and find you in violation of a technicality of the law.
While I see (although I do disagree with) you opinion, it is not entirely relevant to this particular case. In this case the claim that these kids "knew it was against the law" is not the point. The point is that they are being prosecuted in a manner that is inconsistent with the intent of the law (and, while IANAL, the minority opinion supports this). These are laws that are designed to prosecute people that prey on children. When we move into post-pubescence, though we often encounter a host of different problems (and part of the problem behind failing to legally distinguish between pedophilia and ephebophilia along with a host of other related issues): is this a relationship between a teen and an adult and generally considered to be the case that the teen knows what they're doing (unlike in most pedophilic interactions) but in which the teen is making poor decisions and generally being manipulated? Or is this the case of, as in this case, two teens of similar age doing what comes naturally to... well, by definition every post-pubescent.
This distinction is critical because in the first two cases we are dealing with adults taking advantage of (either intentionally or not) someone younger than them. In the latter situation we do not have that same problem. The law is clearly focused merely on preventing the former scenario. This would be tantamount to prosecuting a 17 year-old for owning a naked picture of himself. If he looks at himself naked in the mirror is he getting a hot one-on-one live sex show?
Further, to put this in the context of your statements, that parents will be held legally accountable for the actions of their children, this entire issue isn't at all relevant. True, you focus almost exclusively on teen pregnancies which are a slightly different issue, but in this case there is no parental liability. These were photographs made in private for personal use. Thus, according to your reasoning -"if 'someone else' is held accountable for the actions of a 17 year old, that 'someone else' gets to dictate the rules" - my interpretation would be that the person being held legally responsible is to be provided with decision-making authority. Since there is no parental accountability in this case the parents would have no right to dictate whether the teens can or cannot do this.
I think that older games actually had walls all the time. Think back to Contra, for example. While definitely one of the harder games, it certainly didn't affect sales much. You played the game and accepted that you probably weren't going to make it to the end. Beating a game was an accomplishment that took time and effort, not a natural expectation like finishing a book. Beating it meant that you were finally good enough to win.
Was it frustrating? Yes, at times it was pretty irritating. At the same time, games weren't measured in length the way they often are today. It's not a question of putting in more levels just to extend playtime. To go back to Contra you can play through it in what, 30 minutes to an hour? But is that really the actual play-time?
This is only a very recent issue. In the past the game was supposed to be hard. Hell, most games only have 10 levels or so total. The point was that the game was a challenge. You kept playing and playing and playing and trying to advance. Eventually you'd get better and slowly advance in the game. The people who beat games didn't do so because the makers intended everyone to get to the end, but because they had mastered the game.
Then again in those days (generally) you couldn't save your game. Also, this is not a blanket case and applies mainly to action games rather than adventure, RPG, or the like. This is also largely due to many earlier games having descended from arcade games where this was really the only way to handle a game.
Partially this represents a shift in the attitudes of game developers/audiences. Gaming has become more like a movie or book where you tell a story and mediate an experience. The older, challenge based area of action gaming has generally been given over to online multiplayer gaming where the challenge is constant and dynamic... but you'll never really be able to say that you're good enough to beat it.
Basically, what I'm saying is maybe we shouldn't harshly grade games based on the idea that everyone should be able to just play it straight through, but perhaps, we should accept that sometimes you just need to practice and get better... not cheat or demand easier games.
Then again, when there's some damn jumping puzzle that just makes a single part of a game unreasonably hard for no good reason that's just bad design and always has been.
So does anybody know when Google is going to start calling the people who applied to come in for interviews?
Yes, but also the problem in asking "Why haven't you bought a next-gen system?" isn't a valid question yet. Sure people want to say that last-gen systems are the real winners here, but until everyone who wants a Wii can get one, the lack of supply is a valid impediment to learning anything from the question. One which really wants to hear: "The PS3 is unreasonably expensive/has no good games." or "Microsoft sucks and it'll be a cold day in hell before I give them any cash for that damn 360 (even if it finally has managed to secure some decent games, unlike the original which was mainly a place for PC ports, among which Halo was a notable example of a PC game that was only good enough for console gamers ;) ).
Part of the data is problematic as the Wii is still selling very strongly. Months after launch and while PS3s are starting to pile up and reach the level where you can just go into a store and buy one, the Wii is still a mixture of luck and/or staking out the store.
Given this information many people are waiting for a price drop on the PS3 and some good games to come out (I know I have an interest in it, but it's definitely a secondary console to me and the price will have to come waaay down), but most people with an interest in a Wii simply haven't been able to buy one yet making sales figures largely meaningless at this point in time. A better idea would be to chart the number produced along with the number sold-through to consumers and fill in the intermedian space. Graphing this since release date would begin to show which system is holding up in available sales.
Actually have jobs that you want to hire people for. Giving away other free things or trying to put on some silly show isn't the point. People go to job fairs because they want a job. Take resumes and try to call people back the next day for interviews if at all possible.
Trust me. Right now I'm almost two years out of college with degrees in biology and microbiology and two years of undergraduate research and I'm still looking for a job. The only thing I want from a company is a paying position there.
I understand your anger. Seriously, this must have sucked for you guys. The problem is that all of the responses I'm hearing are basically along the lines of "I live in Boston and this was a huge pain in the ass for me so these guys are total bastards who should have known better." The problem is that Boston was the only city out of ten that had a problem as a result of this. So yeah, I can sympathize that you're pissed, but be pissed at the police and their overblown response to it. They overreacted to a fucking lite-brite simply because they didn't recognize the character on it. And yeah, it was pretty stupid from the perspective of an ad, even for guerrilla marketing, since there was no way for anyone who wasn't already in the know to take anything away from it. The best they could have hoped for was a friend who said "Oh, it's a reference to a show that you don't watch"
In short it's not about whether this was a good ad campaign, how clever the people who put it together think they are, or how badly inconvenienced you are and want someone to lash out at in response (may I suggest... hmm... Iraq? Oh wait, they're not the hip scapegoat and Afghanistan is so old it's coming up on retro-cool for mindless backlashes... maybe get in on the ground floor and take it out on Iran?) it's about the fear that anything you don't immediately understand is supposedly a threat (ah... the American Way!) and the post-9/11 fear culture that terrorists are everywhere just waiting to strike (a fun twist on all that excitingly retro Red Scare paranoia!).
Accept that Boston was the only place where anyone even remotely gave a shit about this, blame your local cops, and get over it.
Surprisingly only Boston had a problem with this when TFA mentions that these are up in 9 other cities. Likewise I've only heard Boston-based posters complaining about how this was irresponsible and something that obviously looked a lot like a bomb so it needed to be investigated.
Yep, you made 'em, you own 'em. Screw that crazy notion that children might actually be their own people. Screw it in the ear I say!
This was, well, like 5 years ago now, but he was the only professor like this. Actually, he wasn't a professor proper, but some lesser class of instructor who had his masters from the same damn school. While you make a valid point (and from most professors I'd have been fine with it) he was just a dick, plain and simple. He also had some strong views about how programming should be an assembly-line job and often failed to know basic things about crap he tried to force on the class. Most of my other CS professors were good and almost all of my biology profs (my major, CS was just a minor) were excellent.
It wasn't any real challenge (c'mon, this was basic Java and since it's cross-platform it was never an issue how I got it done as long as I got it done) to just do it my own way. The point was that some CS profs are just arrogant asshats, regardless of your gender.
My girlfriend, a biologist, took the CS intro class (based on Java as was the entire CS program) when we were in college and didn't have to put up with any of that. I'm willing to bet that your experience was an isolated experience based on your campus alone... though I'm not discounting it entirely as there are assholes everywhere.
Personally I found the professor to be an unqualified and pompous jackass whose only goal was to teach people that a "...For Dummies" programming style and slavish desire to corporate conformity were where it's at. The guy cared more about slamming Unix compared to Windows and "professional" programming and bitching that if you wanted to be a "hacker" (I'm amazed he even knew the proper meaning) to drop the class and take a C course instead (good advice, if only a C course were available and his wasn't a pre-requisite to everything else in the CS program). So it's not like the guy was particularly nice to begin with. He didn't give a shit if you were a girl, just if you wanted to write your code in vi.
I see your point and on a purely economic level it has merits. However, at a practical level if Sony goes to market with a device that sells at exactly the rate of supply to demand (for the unit at that price point) with a ludicrously high initial price the market perception will be that the PS3 is an unreasonably expensive device (as even their current price has done) which shuts off the consumer interest and with a decrease in consumer interest (which will be quite hard to regain) you also lose interest from software providers which will make or break a system. One of the main reasons I've stuck by Nintendo for so long is due to the quality of their first-party exclusive software which is often vastly superior to exclusive titles on other consoles.
Thus while Sony would make a bit of extra money at launch rather than sell-outs (which only tend to make an object appear more desirable to consumers) they would ultimately lose customers in the long run. Not only due to public perception that the system is overpriced (which, as stated earlier has already seriously affected Sony) and resulting in loss of interest, but by slowly lowering the price in order to strictly control the market and only selling to the next-wealthiest (or merely those with poor money/sense ratios) group of potential consumers they would alienate the market as well by conducting business in a fashion that consumers associate as being money-grubbing and sleazy.
Again, from a point of view based on pure economics and with a constant rate of demand that curves based on price this works and your analysis is correct. When viewed with the more social, malleable factors of marketing though it doesn't hold up.
The problem is that while sellouts occurred on both sides the Wii had a greater supply to sell out of. I greatly suspect that the PS3 might not have sold out if they hadn't had a seriously limited supply. Their demand vs. price curve is very gentle until the price comes down by a few hundred dollars. While I still think that Sony is doing things the wrong way they have been able to sell a lot of units at a ridiculously high price. Unless their heads are completely up their asses (very likely though that may be) the prices will start coming down as supply starts going up. This means that only the die-hards who just have to have it out of the gate will buy it now, but sales to the masses won't cause undue demand until the supply is able to support it.
Personally I still think the Wii is the best of the systems and not just because I'm a Nintendo fanboy who only bought a non-Nintendo console for the first time last Summer (a PS2 incidentally... time to cash in on all those great titles that I missed). The level of adoption seems much more likely as well based not only on obvious demand by consumers, but because of the vastly lower price.
While I realize that there are always going to be issues with this sort of thing "anyone who wants one" is a bit off the mark at the moment. I'd be interested in one (though, not until I get a Wii), but not at the current price.
Sony has set their pricing such that they have massively decreased demand largely on the basis of price alone. Bring it down to a more reasonable level... hell, even $400 (for the 60 GB) would be more reasonable given the current price and sales would start picking up. People want it, they just don't happen to have a spare grand lying around taking up space.
I know it's high. I'm paying $1200 on a 1 bedroom apartment (a basement place about a block from the Daly City BART, but just barely within city limits) shared with my girlfriend. For comparisons I was paying about $600 for a larger two bedroom apartment in a well-managed complex with in-unit washer/dryer, dishwasher, included cable TV, and pool before moving. That was in a small, college town in Kansas (Manhattan, KS to be exact) though where that was at the high end of the scale.
At the same time though I've found that the majority of other basic living expenses (e.g. food) tend to be roughly equivalent to what I was paying previously. I've only lived here for a few months and while things are more expensive in general, in my experience most basic services are only slightly higher if at all.
Personally I see the appeal, but it feels like this service will only be used in two ways: 1)people who want to use it to get online while wandering around town or to provide connectivity for ultra-portable devices (e.g. PDAs, DS, etc.) 2)low-income Internet availability. From the way I've heard it pushed (I haven't been to any of the community meetings so this is mainly what I've read online and in the Guardian) this is exactly the way they've been trying to sell it. Bleeding-hearts can claim that they're helping the poor get online while the rest of us will still pay for broadband at home and use it occasionally rather than paying some jackass coffee house to get access. Seriously, why do I almost only find places that want to charge me to get online? Hell, when I was in college elsewhere the local pizza place and a bunch of bars had wifi for free... it was just a smart move on behalf of businesses to spend $40 a month on broadband and install an access point just to grab extra business.
To provide some relevant information the minimum wage just increased here with the new year to $9.14/hr.
I respectfully disagree. It has appeared to me that the market really wants HD TVs. The problem is that they're expensive and since they already have a TV at the moment the purchase is often delayed.
The fact that many of these same people often stretch SD TV, poorly calibrate the image, and do all sorts of other things to their displays that show that they have little regard for quality still bothers me, but they do want them and are willing to buy them.
For the record I am a biologist and specifically a cancer geneticist and while I only graduated recently this is something that I can't recall ever having discussed. Not even in a course devoted to the biology of cancer cells.
At the same time it makes almost perfect sense as a potentially important paradigm shift in how we think about cancer and, from the perspective of this article, how we treat cancers.
Essentially the way cancers were currently thought to function is that normal, differentiated cells sometimes just go bad. A skin cell, for example, becomes mutated over time, perhaps by exposure to radiation (e.g. UV radiation from the sun) and the cumulative effect of those mutations causes it to spiral out of control. First the cell becomes able to divide again, something that differentiated cells don't typically do. Second the cell loses the proper controls over when and how it should replicate. Finally the cell becomes resistant to the typical means by which aberrant cells are destroyed naturally by the body. That's what cancer is in a nutshell, a cell that shouldn't be growing, growing out of control with no regard to the needs of other cells, and with a resistance to the body's normal methods of stopping it.
This theory states that instead of a normal, differentiated skin cell like the mainstream has typically assumed is responsible it is instead a stem cell: one of the undifferentiated cells that is naturally capable of unlimited replication. While the layman can see that this takes out one of the three necessary steps for a cell to become cancerous (thus reducing the total number of mutations needed) the greater issue (at least as posed in this article) is that if these cells are the root cause of cancer we have been investing too heavily in the wrong kinds of treatment. Instead of going for large-scale destruction of the entire tumor mass (an important consideration regardless) we need to be focusing on destroying the ringleader stem cells that produce sub-cells that produce the tumor mass.
If you think of it like an RTS game the stem cells are the factory producing the tanks. Sure if you destroy all of the tanks it'll make the problem go away for a while (remission), but if you don't hunt down and destroy what's causing the tanks to be produced you're just going to have to deal with another rush (relapse) of tanks in the future.
This theory hypothesizes that this is the reason why it will often appear that the totality of the cancer is gone, but a relapse will happen in the future. It's because the cancerous stem cell was not destroyed.