Well that's too bad. I didn't mean to insult him personally, which is why I didn't e-mail it to him. I just was making the observation that he doesn't update often and when he does, they're not too great.
See, its good that you're coming up with tests that are simple, but to better prove your point, you would also come up with one that is feasible to those of us who are not oil tycoons. As such I have no way of running your test: Exxon won't let me borrow any more of their tankers after that Valdez thing, no matter how many times I apologize.
"Casual games are selling really well" is good, but how do you leap from that to "Hardcore games aren't going to be made anymore?" If you follow all trends to their illogical extremes, the future begins to look like a really bizarre place, and death of hardcore gaming is among the least of your concerns. If current population trends continue, in 5000 years the earth would be a ball of human flesh expanding at the speed of light. Of course, that can't actually happen.
Videogame sales are overtaking movie sales. Anyone seriously think movies are going to die?
Much the same "Casual gaming" is gaining ground but extrapolating that to say it will continue until 100% of all games sold will be casual in a few years is delusional. That doesn't make sense. People who get into making games because they love making games aren't going to make casual games because goodgearguide said they will. Gamers who like challenging games aren't going to buy wii fit knockoffs just because casual gaming is on the rise.
I really don't understand where this urge to claim the sky is falling and nintendo is causing it is coming from. My best guess is elitism, new people are coming to our hobby, but they're not into the exact same things we are, so we think they're stupid, some of us become paranoid and start forming odd conspiracy theories where these johnny come latelys are trying to deprive us of our games and make us play wii sports. It's stupid. As long as we have money and are willing to buy games that appeal to us, there will be games made to appeal to us.
Sony and microsoft are wanting to get in on the casual action. Naturally. That sounds a bit scary until you ask yourself "What good hardcore games were any of them making anyway?" Seriously. Of the three console makers, only nintendo was making many quality titles, and they've been for the kids since I was a kid.
Microsoft made Halo, only they didn't really make it so much as buy Bungie who made it, and I don't see a Halo 4 coming out or doing well if it does. At the moment, I can't think of a single other microsoft game, besides their flight sim.
Sony makes gran turismo and God of War, which are nice and all, but again, hardcore gaming doesn't exactly depend on them.
folks with high speed Internet connections that fill our tubes with spam because the moron will click on ANYTHING that has the words "tits" or "lesbos" in it,it truly is a different world now.
Your tits and lesbos link seems to be broken. You owe me a new mouse.
The first one, however, combined with the second one, means that the city broadband departments can ONLY charge what it costs to keep it running/upgrade it. Otherwise, they'll just be racking up money and not be able to spend it. This seems like it would be worse for broadband companies - citizens are guaranteed a service with no markup. Any price over the actual cost of bandwidth, power, and repair would go into upgrading and expanding the network, rather than some executive's bank account.
I thought that too, except it seems like that would ban both transfering funds out of and INTO the broadband division. So if your city were running such a service and ran over budget, as happens even with the best managed organizations from time to time, then you couldn't cover it with other funds. I'm not sure why the author assumes there will always be leftover funds from subscriptions. If that were always going to happen, yeah, that would be pointless, but it won't. Greenlight would have to either charge a lot more than they should have to to make sure they're not going to come up short, or would die as soon as the unforseen happened. Pretty evil.
But the more problematic criminals are also the ones that are most likely to be aware of this and be careful with what and who they trust.
I'd rather have problematic criminals than problematic government/corporate censorship, and anyway the two are never mutually exclusive. Government filtering the internet doesn't seem to be getting rid of all child porn. What's the point then of censorship if the stuff they mean to censor is still out there?
It's not necessarily cheaper or better. If they only charge $99/month, but then need another $100/month of increased taxes from each person then it isn't really any cheaper. In fact it could be much more expensive.
Presumably the low cost of service is subsidized with tax money because it's not a private 3rd party.
Presumably you did RTFA but missed this part:
One last note, Wilson tax money does not fund Greenlight. Citizens who choose Greenlight buy the services just like they would from any other provider.
But a government-run business charging break-even prices is not fair competition for any business. But a government-run business charging break-even prices is not fair competition for any business.
It's not fair competition because it's not competition: time warner refused to give them fast service, THEN greenlight was born. Furthermore, TFA points out that tax money is NOT used!
What is happening here is TWC offering B, the community wanting A and making it themselves, so TWC is trying to ban A so everyone has to buy their B.
Anyway, even if this were not the case, who cares? Maybe my pink roots are showing, but if the people of Wilson are getting a better deal, so what if it's not strict capitalism? I don't think most of us are capitalist because we think that's what God wants us to be. The only reason to go with capitalism is because it's generally more efficient. In cases of monopoly, like this basically is, it apperantly isn't more efficient. So why not do this?
And it's not like government goliath vs david TWC. TWC has way more money to invest, they have much more of an advantage than this grassroots organization. That they're unable to compete is all their failure and they should eat it.
Basically if you give all the money to other companies that arent your company but really are because you are both owned by the same people, you've on paper lost a ton of money (they call it gross), but that's only on paper.
Whats funny to me is that after screwing over the author of Forest Gump, the studios approached him for rights to the sequel. As the wiki page mentions, he told them he "he cannot in good conscience allow money to be wasted on a failure." So, good job guys, you've ensured you're never going to make money from the second movie.
I swear if people across this country put half the thought into their buisness that they do into how to cheat their way into more money, we'd have no economic troubles and would nationally be 10 trillion in black rather than in red. And we'd have much better movies.
Neither Rock Band or Guitar Hero are very age appropriate for kids. Not only are the lyrics and imagery questionable, even the "Easy" (for GH) level is pretty darned hard for them, and the "Beginner" (or whatever they call it) level is so dumbed down that even they think its just a joke.
Difficulty wise, Rock band has a "no fail" option where they can play on any difficulty but the song won't cut out even if they miss every note. There are cheat codes on GH 1,2, and 3 at least that allow you to do the same thing. I'd be very suprised if they didn't have that for Guitar hero world tour. If they don't like that, tell them they need to practice or wait until they grow bigger fingers.
If you're worried about lyrics and imagery, well, there is guitar praise (http://www.guitarpraise.com/). Not really my cup of tea but if that's what you're into for your family it might be worth checking out.
"a half-dressed, skanky chick with needle tracks up her arm" DON'T talk about Judy Nails like that! She's diabetic, not a junkie! And she's not skanky either! I'll kick your ass!
Kidding of course. I mean, I don't see the needle tracks, but I can understand the rest.
They don't seem to have ever done anything with those names, maybe they were considering it a while and decided not to or maybe they just didn't want anyone coming up with a cheap knockoff or a ripoff that was better than their product. Which is sad, I really am curious as to what "Guitar Villain" would be. Maybe it would have been grunge (killing hair metal), maybe it would have been all awesomely bad songs like "Final countdown" or "We built this city", who knows. But I'd bet if there was any product they were thinking of developing it was just the multiplayer mode from guitar hero 3 expanded, in which you could obtain powerups to mess with the other person. Which may not have been fun, but it makes the most sense for that name that I could think of.
Anyway, I like the title "Guitar Villain" better and thought that was interesting. Lego Guitar Villain not so much though.
Seriously? Jack Thompson has to be, officially, the least relevant human being the world.
You're right about that. It appears he hasn't won a single victory in court in his crusade (unless you count getting attention a victory). Most of the other pro-censorship voices have distanced themselves from him because he clearly is off his rocker. He was also never the most dangerous when it came to people or organizations advocating censorship in games.
In tragedies where someone who plays games is responsible, games get blamed by the media. Just a few weeks ago I read a 10 year old jumped off a roof with a parachute and died. The article implied it was because he played a wrestling game, instead of pointing out that his mother shouldn't have left him alone all day and the roof of the building shouldn't have been unlocked. It's sensationalism like that which has always been far more dangerous and ridiculous than Jack.
And, since his lawsuits seem to get thrown out of court almost immediately, this really doesn't change anything at all.
Well, in all fairness, the deceased candidate was running against John Ashcroft. Who do you elect, a corpse or John Ashcroft? Not much of a contest really.
In retrospect, we really should have elected the corpse of John Ashcroft. Then maybe Bush wouldn't have appointed him.
You could also say that without crime, police wouldn't exist.
Also, I'm even less of an expert than all the IANAL people around here, so forgive me for asking but without any copyright laws, would there be any need for GPL? I was under the vague impression that GPL was an effort to prevent someone from using part or all of your work that you wanted to remain free to the public and stamping their own copyright on it. Again though I admit I'm very unfamiliar with that stuff, and would be more suprised if I was right than I would be to hear that's not what GPL was about.
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Dude, they're talking about if you were trying to throw your wii through a basket and it rebounds wildly off the rim or backboard making you look foolish. Not literal bricks, that would be nuts!
Never DOUBT. CHECK!
I doubt I'll take that advice.
Well that's too bad. I didn't mean to insult him personally, which is why I didn't e-mail it to him. I just was making the observation that he doesn't update often and when he does, they're not too great.
Simple test. Get two oil tankers.
See, its good that you're coming up with tests that are simple, but to better prove your point, you would also come up with one that is feasible to those of us who are not oil tycoons. As such I have no way of running your test: Exxon won't let me borrow any more of their tankers after that Valdez thing, no matter how many times I apologize.
I hadn't checked that site in two months. That was the only new comic up. He honestly took two months to come up with THAT?
I also object to the shoddy logic used here.
"Casual games are selling really well" is good, but how do you leap from that to "Hardcore games aren't going to be made anymore?" If you follow all trends to their illogical extremes, the future begins to look like a really bizarre place, and death of hardcore gaming is among the least of your concerns. If current population trends continue, in 5000 years the earth would be a ball of human flesh expanding at the speed of light. Of course, that can't actually happen.
Videogame sales are overtaking movie sales. Anyone seriously think movies are going to die?
Much the same "Casual gaming" is gaining ground but extrapolating that to say it will continue until 100% of all games sold will be casual in a few years is delusional. That doesn't make sense. People who get into making games because they love making games aren't going to make casual games because goodgearguide said they will. Gamers who like challenging games aren't going to buy wii fit knockoffs just because casual gaming is on the rise.
I really don't understand where this urge to claim the sky is falling and nintendo is causing it is coming from. My best guess is elitism, new people are coming to our hobby, but they're not into the exact same things we are, so we think they're stupid, some of us become paranoid and start forming odd conspiracy theories where these johnny come latelys are trying to deprive us of our games and make us play wii sports. It's stupid. As long as we have money and are willing to buy games that appeal to us, there will be games made to appeal to us.
Sony and microsoft are wanting to get in on the casual action. Naturally. That sounds a bit scary until you ask yourself "What good hardcore games were any of them making anyway?" Seriously. Of the three console makers, only nintendo was making many quality titles, and they've been for the kids since I was a kid.
Microsoft made Halo, only they didn't really make it so much as buy Bungie who made it, and I don't see a Halo 4 coming out or doing well if it does. At the moment, I can't think of a single other microsoft game, besides their flight sim.
Sony makes gran turismo and God of War, which are nice and all, but again, hardcore gaming doesn't exactly depend on them.
Terrible article.
folks with high speed Internet connections that fill our tubes with spam because the moron will click on ANYTHING that has the words "tits" or "lesbos" in it,it truly is a different world now.
Your tits and lesbos link seems to be broken. You owe me a new mouse.
How do you know it's even out there at all?
If it's not out there, then why do I occasionally hear of people getting arrested for it?
The first one, however, combined with the second one, means that the city broadband departments can ONLY charge what it costs to keep it running/upgrade it. Otherwise, they'll just be racking up money and not be able to spend it. This seems like it would be worse for broadband companies - citizens are guaranteed a service with no markup. Any price over the actual cost of bandwidth, power, and repair would go into upgrading and expanding the network, rather than some executive's bank account.
I thought that too, except it seems like that would ban both transfering funds out of and INTO the broadband division. So if your city were running such a service and ran over budget, as happens even with the best managed organizations from time to time, then you couldn't cover it with other funds. I'm not sure why the author assumes there will always be leftover funds from subscriptions. If that were always going to happen, yeah, that would be pointless, but it won't. Greenlight would have to either charge a lot more than they should have to to make sure they're not going to come up short, or would die as soon as the unforseen happened. Pretty evil.
But the more problematic criminals are also the ones that are most likely to be aware of this and be careful with what and who they trust.
I'd rather have problematic criminals than problematic government/corporate censorship, and anyway the two are never mutually exclusive. Government filtering the internet doesn't seem to be getting rid of all child porn. What's the point then of censorship if the stuff they mean to censor is still out there?
I don't think it's talking about the government filtering it, yet, but censorship, whether it's government or corporate, is still bullshit.
"THE" toys? Comrade, in soviet russia, definite article uses YOU, not reverse.
It's not necessarily cheaper or better. If they only charge $99/month, but then need another $100/month of increased taxes from each person then it isn't really any cheaper. In fact it could be much more expensive.
Did anyone read the last article?
http://savencbb.wordpress.com/about/
One last note, Wilson tax money does not fund Greenlight. Citizens who choose Greenlight buy the services just like they would from any other provider
Presumably the low cost of service is subsidized with tax money because it's not a private 3rd party.
Presumably you did RTFA but missed this part:
But a government-run business charging break-even prices is not fair competition for any business. But a government-run business charging break-even prices is not fair competition for any business.
It's not fair competition because it's not competition: time warner refused to give them fast service, THEN greenlight was born. Furthermore, TFA points out that tax money is NOT used!
What is happening here is TWC offering B, the community wanting A and making it themselves, so TWC is trying to ban A so everyone has to buy their B.
Anyway, even if this were not the case, who cares? Maybe my pink roots are showing, but if the people of Wilson are getting a better deal, so what if it's not strict capitalism? I don't think most of us are capitalist because we think that's what God wants us to be. The only reason to go with capitalism is because it's generally more efficient. In cases of monopoly, like this basically is, it apperantly isn't more efficient. So why not do this?
And it's not like government goliath vs david TWC. TWC has way more money to invest, they have much more of an advantage than this grassroots organization. That they're unable to compete is all their failure and they should eat it.
Oh they profit from the investment, it's only on paper that they don't profit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
Basically if you give all the money to other companies that arent your company but really are because you are both owned by the same people, you've on paper lost a ton of money (they call it gross), but that's only on paper.
Whats funny to me is that after screwing over the author of Forest Gump, the studios approached him for rights to the sequel. As the wiki page mentions, he told them he "he cannot in good conscience allow money to be wasted on a failure." So, good job guys, you've ensured you're never going to make money from the second movie.
I swear if people across this country put half the thought into their buisness that they do into how to cheat their way into more money, we'd have no economic troubles and would nationally be 10 trillion in black rather than in red. And we'd have much better movies.
Neither Rock Band or Guitar Hero are very age appropriate for kids. Not only are the lyrics and imagery questionable, even the "Easy" (for GH) level is pretty darned hard for them, and the "Beginner" (or whatever they call it) level is so dumbed down that even they think its just a joke.
Difficulty wise, Rock band has a "no fail" option where they can play on any difficulty but the song won't cut out even if they miss every note. There are cheat codes on GH 1,2, and 3 at least that allow you to do the same thing. I'd be very suprised if they didn't have that for Guitar hero world tour. If they don't like that, tell them they need to practice or wait until they grow bigger fingers.
If you're worried about lyrics and imagery, well, there is guitar praise (http://www.guitarpraise.com/). Not really my cup of tea but if that's what you're into for your family it might be worth checking out.
"a half-dressed, skanky chick with needle tracks up her arm" DON'T talk about Judy Nails like that! She's diabetic, not a junkie! And she's not skanky either! I'll kick your ass!
Kidding of course. I mean, I don't see the needle tracks, but I can understand the rest.
If you think "guitar hero" is strange, in 2006 activision trademarked "Guitar Villain" and "Drum Villain."
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6164293.html
They don't seem to have ever done anything with those names, maybe they were considering it a while and decided not to or maybe they just didn't want anyone coming up with a cheap knockoff or a ripoff that was better than their product. Which is sad, I really am curious as to what "Guitar Villain" would be. Maybe it would have been grunge (killing hair metal), maybe it would have been all awesomely bad songs like "Final countdown" or "We built this city", who knows. But I'd bet if there was any product they were thinking of developing it was just the multiplayer mode from guitar hero 3 expanded, in which you could obtain powerups to mess with the other person. Which may not have been fun, but it makes the most sense for that name that I could think of.
Anyway, I like the title "Guitar Villain" better and thought that was interesting. Lego Guitar Villain not so much though.
It's all just flavored ethanol. Deal with it.
I choose to deal with it by drinking delicious Skyy vodka screwdrivers, using delicious MGP ethanol.
Anyway, it's somewhat inaccurate to say MGP manufactures the ethanol. The yeasts do most of the hard work I would assume.
We built this city on rock and roll. Using legos.
Seriously? Jack Thompson has to be, officially, the least relevant human being the world.
You're right about that. It appears he hasn't won a single victory in court in his crusade (unless you count getting attention a victory). Most of the other pro-censorship voices have distanced themselves from him because he clearly is off his rocker. He was also never the most dangerous when it came to people or organizations advocating censorship in games.
In tragedies where someone who plays games is responsible, games get blamed by the media. Just a few weeks ago I read a 10 year old jumped off a roof with a parachute and died. The article implied it was because he played a wrestling game, instead of pointing out that his mother shouldn't have left him alone all day and the roof of the building shouldn't have been unlocked. It's sensationalism like that which has always been far more dangerous and ridiculous than Jack.
And, since his lawsuits seem to get thrown out of court almost immediately, this really doesn't change anything at all.
I am not a lawyer, but... neither is Jack Thompson now.
Wow, that I was wrong, plus the "SURPRISE" added up to about the level of surprisedness that I would have had if I was right.
Well, in all fairness, the deceased candidate was running against John Ashcroft. Who do you elect, a corpse or John Ashcroft? Not much of a contest really.
In retrospect, we really should have elected the corpse of John Ashcroft. Then maybe Bush wouldn't have appointed him.
Anyway, Missouri likes to elect dead candidates
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/weird/NATLMayor-Dies-Wins-Re-election.html
You could also say that without crime, police wouldn't exist.
Also, I'm even less of an expert than all the IANAL people around here, so forgive me for asking but without any copyright laws, would there be any need for GPL? I was under the vague impression that GPL was an effort to prevent someone from using part or all of your work that you wanted to remain free to the public and stamping their own copyright on it. Again though I admit I'm very unfamiliar with that stuff, and would be more suprised if I was right than I would be to hear that's not what GPL was about.