... it is nothing compared to the tremendous fallout that would befall the Interweb, should AOL ever unleash accidentally almost 13 years of collected AOL chatroom dialogue. It's one thing to see the search strings of User #24601, but quite another to see just what he says when emboldened by conversational anonymity.
Of course, AOL would say now that they don't have that kind of data, that they haven't been logging chat since the earliest days of version 2.0... but come on, would you throw away all of that beautiful demographic fodder?
For reasons I cannot explain, I still love the little crystalline music bed that plays in Everquest during your swim from the dock at Halas to the cave into Everfrost. How a little new age hypno-track can be so immersive, I've no idea... but it works for me.
This year's report card shows that children and youth still have easy access to such "killographic games."
Where. are. their. parents?
These children do not have jobs, so unless they're getting a $50-a-week allowance to blow on video games, then mom and dad have to be laying out the cash directly. And if these kids are getting that much cashola for mowing the lawn and cleaning their room, then why aren't these parents keeping better track of what merchandise is being brought into the house?
Please America... stop blaming the gaming/movie/music industry for your own parental failings.
Splinter Cell is a brilliant use of the new Unreal engine. Even though I've finished it, I find myself firing it back up again just to be reminded of how good an F/TPS can be.
I see your point, as the class-less system does seem to allow greater freedom of activity, but it also removes any kind of purpose. I have this blank sheet of paper, but only two crayons. Those two crayons are marked: "Mine Asteroids" and "Shoot Things."
Let me put it this way. I created what was supposed to be a renegade engineer, a Minmatar character. I built him as a proficient miner because I figured that money might be handy. And that's how I played him. He mined, alone and in groups, then bought a nicer ship and mined more.
My girlfriend made what was (by the class and bloodline description) more of an elite character, one from a life of privilege or something like it. She built her as a fighter, going for a rebellious or black-sheep kind of character. And what has she been able to do with that?
She gets to mine. Someday she'll get a nicer ship, then she can shoot things. Or mine some more.
Maybe there is content yet to be added, but right now I can't see it. And it is likely that anything new and interesting will always be 20 tedious jumpgates away.
(Damn. I sound bitter about this game... and I've not even dropped dime one on it.)
I've been in the beta for about two weeks now. I was hoping for an experience along the lines of the early days of EverQuest, when it was more about exploring and experience than the acquisition of phat plat. What I got was a very pretty game with very little to actually do.
The UI for character creation is fun enough, though I suppose one could dismiss it as a virtual version of that old Barbie head my cousin used to abuse. After picking your race and bloodline, you alter the look of your character by tilting the head to and fro, changing the eyes, applying a beard, placing a scar and so on. It's a neat use of the 3d engine, but really all you're doing is making a static avatar for in-game chat and to appear stamp-like in the upper-right corner of your HUD.
The game itself is admittedly gorgeous. At times, it is like playing in one of those Astronomy Pictures-of-the-Day. But you know, that can get quite tedious, feeling more like a Photoshop image with too much lens flare. The ships are unique, not drawing too much from existing and standard sources like Star Wars or Star Trek and so on. The stations and jumpgates all are built to the standards set by the creating race, from rusty i-beam industrial for one to shining gold and glass for another. Out from the stations are the asteroid belts, huge hanging semi-circles of boulderous rock, around which lurk the occasional pirate.
And that's about it. You have two choices of action. You fight pirates or you mine asteroids. Fighting pirates is far too risky at first, so you spend a lot of time mining asteroids. So much time that many on the boards of the beta suggest having a book handy to occupy your mining time.
The comradery in the beta has been good and I've had a couple of good nights out in the higher yield mines with fine folks from Toronto and Europe, still awake at 4am their time when I'm just getting started at 10pm EST. But really, it all comes down to the acquisition of more cash to get a better ship to use to then get more cash.
And I won't go into the massive bugs that still exist this late into the beta, many that result in a sudden crash to the desktop and others that have managed to lay waste to a few users' harddrives (but not mine.)
All in all, I think I prefer old Norrath to the new coldness of space.
forget this hallmark holiday. forget the "be mine" hearts that taste like sugared chalk. forget the chocolate that will be sold at 75% off tomorrow. this is modern romance.
(yes. i posted this as an entry on my own site, complete with linkback.)
Who are these Arches? And why doesn't a Google search for "Arches" come up with anything more than state parks and a band of that same name?
Love is Not Love... (Ending Spoilers)
on
Review: A.I.
·
· Score: 1
I agree with several on this board on the ending. I was so ready for the camera to simply pull away from the submerged David, praying in the dark to the deaf Blue Fairy. For all of the minor disappointments throughout the film, I was ready to forgive Spielberg. My heart was sinking, my mind was reeling and I wanted to walk out with an urge to ponder and discuss.
But then... Ben Kingsley starts his "2000 years later" speech and we are flying somebody's half-ass concept of an airbus over the surface of Hoth. Dang.
Now. Accepting the movie as is, and realizing that we could all do our own Phantom Edit just by hitting "stop" twenty or so minutes earlier, does anyone else have any issue with the "bring mom back" ending? It is saying something about love, or at least Spielberg's concept of love, that we might be missing. And what it is saying seems rather selfish and disturbing, and not in a Kubrick way.
David is programmed to love. David specifically loves Monica. So the mega-mechas bring back Monica with the caveat that she will live for only one day. David knows this, knows that his mom will have to die a second time, but insists on her return. Now, here is where it gets creepy, and maybe this is a point (perhaps unintentional) we are missing.
Monica wakes and the first person she sees is David. She seems to have no concept of anyone else, no husband, no son, doesn't ask about either of them. There is only David, a mirror image of David's tunnel-vision concept of Monica. In essence, the mega-mechas have only provided David with a Monica made in his own image. But is that love? It is more like Midsummer Night's Dream when the spellbound Titania falls for the donkey-headed Bottom simply because he is the first creature she sees.
If we are meant to leave with the impression that David was finally able to become "human" through the receipt of human love and affection, this is not the way to do it. If anything, Monica has been brought back as a similacrum, capable of nothing but an obedient love, a programmed love. David ends up with a dehumanized mother, and perhaps that is the only kind he can ever have.
And that is the sick feeling I took away from the theatre, undefined until a week later. If only I would have known to leave when the ferris wheel fell....
grabbingsand "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad."
Slashdot Mirror
... it is nothing compared to the tremendous fallout that would befall the Interweb, should AOL ever unleash accidentally almost 13 years of collected AOL chatroom dialogue. It's one thing to see the search strings of User #24601, but quite another to see just what he says when emboldened by conversational anonymity. Of course, AOL would say now that they don't have that kind of data, that they haven't been logging chat since the earliest days of version 2.0 ... but come on, would you throw away all of that beautiful demographic fodder?
For reasons I cannot explain, I still love the little crystalline music bed that plays in Everquest during your swim from the dock at Halas to the cave into Everfrost. How a little new age hypno-track can be so immersive, I've no idea... but it works for me.
Troll Status Confirmed:
http://www.squabble.org/index?id=527100
This year's report card shows that children and youth still have easy access to such "killographic games."
Where. are. their. parents?
These children do not have jobs, so unless they're getting a $50-a-week allowance to blow on video games, then mom and dad have to be laying out the cash directly. And if these kids are getting that much cashola for mowing the lawn and cleaning their room, then why aren't these parents keeping better track of what merchandise is being brought into the house?
Please America... stop blaming the gaming/movie/music industry for your own parental failings.
Splinter Cell is a brilliant use of the new Unreal engine. Even though I've finished it, I find myself firing it back up again just to be reminded of how good an F/TPS can be.
I see your point, as the class-less system does seem to allow greater freedom of activity, but it also removes any kind of purpose. I have this blank sheet of paper, but only two crayons. Those two crayons are marked: "Mine Asteroids" and "Shoot Things."
Let me put it this way. I created what was supposed to be a renegade engineer, a Minmatar character. I built him as a proficient miner because I figured that money might be handy. And that's how I played him. He mined, alone and in groups, then bought a nicer ship and mined more.
My girlfriend made what was (by the class and bloodline description) more of an elite character, one from a life of privilege or something like it. She built her as a fighter, going for a rebellious or black-sheep kind of character. And what has she been able to do with that?
She gets to mine. Someday she'll get a nicer ship, then she can shoot things. Or mine some more.
Maybe there is content yet to be added, but right now I can't see it. And it is likely that anything new and interesting will always be 20 tedious jumpgates away.
(Damn. I sound bitter about this game... and I've not even dropped dime one on it.)
I've been in the beta for about two weeks now. I was hoping for an experience along the lines of the early days of EverQuest, when it was more about exploring and experience than the acquisition of phat plat. What I got was a very pretty game with very little to actually do.
The UI for character creation is fun enough, though I suppose one could dismiss it as a virtual version of that old Barbie head my cousin used to abuse. After picking your race and bloodline, you alter the look of your character by tilting the head to and fro, changing the eyes, applying a beard, placing a scar and so on. It's a neat use of the 3d engine, but really all you're doing is making a static avatar for in-game chat and to appear stamp-like in the upper-right corner of your HUD.
The game itself is admittedly gorgeous. At times, it is like playing in one of those Astronomy Pictures-of-the-Day. But you know, that can get quite tedious, feeling more like a Photoshop image with too much lens flare. The ships are unique, not drawing too much from existing and standard sources like Star Wars or Star Trek and so on. The stations and jumpgates all are built to the standards set by the creating race, from rusty i-beam industrial for one to shining gold and glass for another. Out from the stations are the asteroid belts, huge hanging semi-circles of boulderous rock, around which lurk the occasional pirate.
And that's about it. You have two choices of action. You fight pirates or you mine asteroids. Fighting pirates is far too risky at first, so you spend a lot of time mining asteroids. So much time that many on the boards of the beta suggest having a book handy to occupy your mining time.
The comradery in the beta has been good and I've had a couple of good nights out in the higher yield mines with fine folks from Toronto and Europe, still awake at 4am their time when I'm just getting started at 10pm EST. But really, it all comes down to the acquisition of more cash to get a better ship to use to then get more cash.
And I won't go into the massive bugs that still exist this late into the beta, many that result in a sudden crash to the desktop and others that have managed to lay waste to a few users' harddrives (but not mine.)
All in all, I think I prefer old Norrath to the new coldness of space.
forget this hallmark holiday. forget the "be mine" hearts that taste like sugared chalk. forget the chocolate that will be sold at 75% off tomorrow. this is modern romance.
(yes. i posted this as an entry on my own site, complete with linkback.)
congratulations kids.
hrmm....
was i dreaming when i paid for my bill at steak-n-shake with a visa card? i thought that the sit-down customers could do that....
and if i was dreaming about that, damn, i need to buy better dreams.
Who are these Arches? And why doesn't a Google search for "Arches" come up with anything more than state parks and a band of that same name?
I agree with several on this board on the ending. I was so ready for the camera to simply pull away from the submerged David, praying in the dark to the deaf Blue Fairy. For all of the minor disappointments throughout the film, I was ready to forgive Spielberg. My heart was sinking, my mind was reeling and I wanted to walk out with an urge to ponder and discuss.
But then... Ben Kingsley starts his "2000 years later" speech and we are flying somebody's half-ass concept of an airbus over the surface of Hoth. Dang.
Now. Accepting the movie as is, and realizing that we could all do our own Phantom Edit just by hitting "stop" twenty or so minutes earlier, does anyone else have any issue with the "bring mom back" ending? It is saying something about love, or at least Spielberg's concept of love, that we might be missing. And what it is saying seems rather selfish and disturbing, and not in a Kubrick way.
David is programmed to love. David specifically loves Monica. So the mega-mechas bring back Monica with the caveat that she will live for only one day. David knows this, knows that his mom will have to die a second time, but insists on her return. Now, here is where it gets creepy, and maybe this is a point (perhaps unintentional) we are missing.
Monica wakes and the first person she sees is David. She seems to have no concept of anyone else, no husband, no son, doesn't ask about either of them. There is only David, a mirror image of David's tunnel-vision concept of Monica. In essence, the mega-mechas have only provided David with a Monica made in his own image. But is that love? It is more like Midsummer Night's Dream when the spellbound Titania falls for the donkey-headed Bottom simply because he is the first creature she sees.
If we are meant to leave with the impression that David was finally able to become "human" through the receipt of human love and affection, this is not the way to do it. If anything, Monica has been brought back as a similacrum, capable of nothing but an obedient love, a programmed love. David ends up with a dehumanized mother, and perhaps that is the only kind he can ever have.
And that is the sick feeling I took away from the theatre, undefined until a week later. If only I would have known to leave when the ferris wheel fell....
grabbingsand
"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad."