In college, I probably ran Paranoia campaigns more than any other game system. I loved it. One of my favorite elements of the rules was (Warning: Security Clearance Ultraviolet! If you ever intend to play Paranoia and have not game-mastered, reading further is treason!) the way the rule book specifically insisted that you should reward bravado. Any time somebody tries to do something suicidally stupid that just... might... work, the gamemaster was expected to throw the rules out the window, pretend to be rolling some dice to make it look official maybe, but ultimately let the plan to throw cream pies at the MegaBattloidDestroyer Robot work like a charm.:)
I had Paranoia games that killed off the entire party (all six clones of every player) before they even got out of the mission briefing room. Hell, one time I killed them off trying to get to the mission briefing, and a fun time was had by all.
Quality of entertainment is much, much more important than length of entertainment
I agree wholeheartedly.
That's why I'd rather own any one version of D&D than every "Baldur's Gate" computer game ever made. No computer game can compare to the infinite variety of pencil-and-paper gaming.
Oh yea, and you can get more length of entertainment, as well as more quality of entertainment, out of any RPG than you can out of any existing computer game. Unless you are one of those people that think re-playing the same 10 hours of Diablo II over and over again to be the most fun thing ever.
I swear, these days, a successful anime DVD set will make more profit than any sci-fi that the American networks can whip up.
If the sales of ST:TNG, Buffy, and X-Files sets is anything to go by, this is simply not true. All of them outsold Anime imports like Bebop and Trigun in the US market, and the licensing fees for making a sub/dub import DVD is huge. First of all, you gotta pay all the original voice actors. Then, you gotta hire an English dub cast (because sales will take a big hit if an English track is not available on the disk... go figure.) Then, you get to watch half your profits go right down the toilet from people selling Hong Kong bootlegs of your show for a third of the price in the Amazon.com reseller's forums and on eBay. Anime has become big business, but not as big as you seem to think.
The Firefly series comes out on DVD soon, including the three un-aired episodes, and it is likely to make far more money from DVD sales than it ever did from the FOX network.
That joke is both old and inaccurate. To grate cheese, you need a piece of metal with a bunch of raised holes. The face of the G5 does not resemble a cheese grater. It's flat. You would have more luck shredding your cheese with the heatsink from your P4.
I think it looks a lot more like an unrolled surface from a micro-screen electric razor.
Actually, the more popular mod chip designs have a toggle switch on them so you can switch them to look "unmodded" to the X-Box Live server, and use all the hacks when in stand-alone mode.
Now that Live has been up for a while, it's probably just a matter of time before X-Box hackers learn what Live is looking for to confirm it's legit, and come up with a mod chip that spoofs that.
So why not treat the Segway as a powered bicycle, and allow it on bike paths?
The same reason you don't currently allow pedestrians on them.
Segways go about 5-8 MPH slower than a good athlete on a bike. If I were an LA cyclist, I would be pissed off to find my riding trails suddenly crammed with those things. At least powered scooters are thin.
If Segways ever start to become popular, then some cities might add paths for them, just like many cities have added bike paths. However, at $5000 for something that does not effectively replace cars, bicycles, or wheelchairs, I doubt that will happen any time soon. The only function Segways really can displace is pedestrian traffic... but since walking is free, and Segways cost a fortune, you won't see that catch on soon either.
One thing they pointed out was that downtown auto traffic is so snarled, that rapid delivery of small packages was best done by bicycle. Same for very large warehouse situations. Seems to me the Segway could enter those markets, were it more-reasonably priced.
You mean, if it were one-tenth of the current price, light enough to easily lift up a flight of sidewalk stairs, considerably faster, and didn't make you look like a total dork? Because then, sure. Otherwise, no.
Also, there's the office assistant lust factor: A thirtysomething female office assistant needs to have a package brought to her. Is she going to go with "SpeedyBike Bicycle Delivery", and have the package brought to her by a young guy who works out all day, every day, and will arrive wearing spandex shorts? Or will she go with "SegwayDeliveries-R-Us" and get the package from a fat retiree on a scooter?
The average speed of a car in a major city is 6 mph. A segay can do 10 - 12, at least.
The "average" speed of cars driving on downtown roads during rush hour includes stopping for traffic lights and slowing for congestion... both of which a Segway would need to do on a crowded urban sidewalk (assuming the city even lets them on the sidewalk, instead of on the street with the bicycles where they belong.)
In other words, you just compared the Segway's top potential speed to the real-world speed of cars in traffic. A completely invalid comparison. A Segway in the city during rush hour will go at almost exactly the same speed as the cars... and on a cold Minnesota day, with sleet pounding down on you, that would be completely intolerable.
Not to mention the fact that most cars are out of downtown traffic and flying down the interstate highway in a matter of blocks, at least in the Twin Cities area. A Segway might get me from the Metrodome to the Target Center in 10 minutes, but can it get me out to Lakeville (a distant suburb) in under 45? Obviously not.
Take notes, inventors who wish to change the world. No personal vehicle will ever replace the car for daily commutes in the US unless it offers the following:
1. A comfortable enclosed cab to protect from the elements. 2. A top speed that at least approaches one mile per minute, and do so reasonably safely and under control. 3. Enough passenger space for a mother of two to drop her kids off at day care on the way to the office. 4. Luggage space allowing enough room for a laptop case, a gym bag, maintenance parts for the vehicle (just like cars almost always have a spare tire, a jack, and jumper cables in the trunk). 5. A convenient way to keep it powered on demand - extended downtime to recharge batteries is not acceptable.
Until the "Segway 2.0" or whatever meets all five of those points, anybody who wants to buy it would need to own both that, and a car... which means that it will remain nothing more than a toy for yuppies.
Golf is expensive, but when I started playing ball (men's fastpitch softball, to be specific) in an amateur adult league, I started with a good $40 mitt and a hand-me down bat. League fees (for two different city leagues) were a total of $100 per season because our team had no sponsor. Since then, I've picked up a little more gear (my own batting helmet, a sliding pad for my left leg, steel cleats, etc.) but it's still nothing like what I've pissed away on gaming PC's. Batting practice is always free as you have a pitcher a bag full of old softballs, and a willingness to show up on a Saturday morning before the kid leagues take over the fields.
Watch a good counterstrike match. If you're open minded, search for the videos:
You are talking about highlight films. Somebody who hates watching baseball will still find it entertaining to watch movie of that Randy Johnson fastball that hit that dove that's been floating around the web for a few years. That doesn't mean that they would enjoy sitting through a nine-inning Diamondbacks game.
BTW: "Machinima" is supposed to refer to animated features made with game engines and tool boxes, like this stuff, not films of "professional" game-players in competition.
I will gladly sit for three hours to watch a little-league soccer game if some friend of mine's kid is playing, or watch a rival fastpitch softball team playing in an exhibition tournament, or watch my local High School's basketball team play a game... but I would never, in a million years, sit and watch any of the same people play Quake for three hours.
If I won't even spend that much time watching somebody I care about playing, why in the hell would I consider watching a professional play!?
Anybody who uses book "reviews" as a means to pimp out books being sold by a marketing partner deserves having to put up with that.
They can run all the banners they want, give premium members the right to see duplicate stories early, etc. I don't even mind the massive square ad they started putting in the middle of stories.
But the stories themselves should not be ads. Unless they want to make "Slashvertizements" a new category, so I can filter them out.
Yea, well.... Watch it or don't. I never said it was the greatest thing since Philo Farnsworth noticed the lines his plow was making in the farm turf. I just said that I (to my surprise) found it kind of entertaining and interesting. It's not like I'm going to TiVo season three or buy any of the albums or anything.
Apart from Simon's refreshing honesty, another fun element of the show was the guest judges. One week, they required all of the contestants to cover Smokie Robinson songs, and Smokie Robinson was added to the judge panel.
Anyway, ultimately it's just another "reality" TV show, 90% of which I don't care for either, so I can see why you didn't bother with it based on the weak previews. I just caught some of it while channel surfing once and found it exceeded my expectations, that's all I was saying. We've probably already discussed the topic longer than it really warrants, so let's just agree to disagree on this one, 'kay?
I can tell you don't watch the show, because if you did you would realize that what Simon Cowell does is not "abuse and debasement." What he gives is his frank and honest opinion. Some of his most bitter-sounding critiques this year were launched at Clay (the funny-lookin' guy who came in second), which Cowell personally championed to be a contestant in the late rounds. He also frequently praised those singers who used his criticisms for the learning opportunity they were, and came back with improved performances in the later rounds.
As far as how non-gently the performers "deserve" to be treated, what do YOU propose? What would be appropriate "criticism" for somebody who has the audacity to actually try to sing on stage, and not be good enough to entertain you?
Watch "Amateur Night At The Apollo" sometime, and you will see what cruel treatment of weak entertainers looks like. The contestants on American Idol, if anything, are coddled by the judges.
The distortion I was referring to was the inherent distortion in any instrument that's not electronic.
To borrow from a favorite movie, "I don't think it means what you think it means."
The word "distortion," when applied to sound, almost always refers to the failure of electronic devices to accurately reproduce an audio source signal.
If I get what you seem to be driving at, I think the word you are fishing for is "timbre," meaning the variations in wave shape which make one voice or instrument sound different from another voice or instrument playing the same pitch.
Bah. The show is an open audition. Since the overwhelming majority of the world is made up of bad singers (and the majority of the ones good enough to make it onto that show are still not really very good), it should come as no shock that there is a lot of bad singing on the show. Bad singing performed by people who think they are destined to be stars.
Is that an ugly spectacle? Maybe, but it's kind of an amplified sample of the actual vetting-out process that actual music-industry talent scouts go through every day, and I found it kind of interesting on that level.
Besides, when did we become a nation of such sensitive crybabies? It's not like these people are being beaten to death with sticks. They are just having their singing critiqued, and far more gently than they deserve more often than not.
It's like nobody knows how to cope with criticism anymore. I think we all need to re-watch Tom Hank's "there's no crying in baseball" rant from A League Of Their Own a few times, and learn to suck it up once in a while.
As Ben Franklin said, our critics are our friends, for they show us our faults.
Cowell often points out that the singer's he's being the most cruel to, he's actually being kinder to than those who encourage them... because they should not be singers, and somebody needs to tell them that before they waste their lives trying to become something they can't be.
It's kind of like if a kid is just barely good enough at basketball to get into a division-C college, and is not likely to grow taller that 5"11", and has no desire to develop passing and ball-handling skills, but dreams of being an NBA center. Are you doing him a favor by telling him to go for it? Obviously not. The nicest thing you could possibly do for that kid is to do whatever it takes to get it through his skull that he will never, ever play center in the NBA, so he damn well better get an education and make something else of himself.
The documentary "Hoop Dreams" shows some very good examples of what happens when nobody does that.
Yes, the fat black guy won, the funny-lookin' guy came in second. Both got record deals and have hit singles out, although I have not heard either of them, being old and out-of touch and all.
American Idol is really just a nation-wide karaoke contest, but I must admit that I enjoyed watching two or three episodes this year when it was on. That Simon Cowell guy is almost always 100% correct when he tells the singers how shitty they are.
The marketing wizards behind the show (of which, he is one, truth be told) kind of make him out to be like one of the "Bad Guys" in professional wrestling, but I'm always rooting for Simon to make the singers run off the stage crying. It almost makes up for hearing them sing.
You can go back farther than that. I'm sure that singing ability was far from the first criteria Gilbert and Sullivan relied on when selecting the leading ladies for their operas.
Every musician who cares about their art needs to come to terms with the fact that 99% of their craft is practiced in the service of an entertainment industry that doesn't give a crap about artistic greatness. It's all about getting money out of the hands of listeners, and into the hands of promoters/patrons/labels/etc. Always has been. If Handel and Beethoven had to deal with this kind of shit in their day, what makes you so special?
If you want to be an "artist", the best thing you can do is just keep working at mastering your craft and not worry about the millions of dollars it seems that an army of inferior musicians are making. They are doing something which doesn't really resemble what you are doing... something which pays better. So either put on a miniskirt and join them *cough*Jewel*cough* or just be happy doing what you are doing. Either way, don't whine about it. Nobody else cares, and you can't make them.
A guitar is not a pure sine wave. Like all stringed instruments, it has overtones which you can easily isolate by lightly touching various nodes along the string. I don't think a distortion stomp-box would improve the virtuoso jazz stylings of Wes Mongomery very much (yea, okay... so the weak amps of the time clipped a little when he pushed them too hard, but he was still playing it mostly clean.)
Distortion, like chorus effects and envelope filters, is simply another option for your guitar's "voice." They don't make bad guitarists sound good, they just make bad guitarists sound distorted.
Back to the topic of vocal pitch correctors... I see this as kind of like drum machines. Do they make me appreciate Neil Peart any less? Nope. Likewise, people will still value somebody who can sing.
Also, there's a lot more to singing than pitch. There's phrasing, vibrato, dynamics, etc., all of which enhance the expression in performance. Also, there's the issue of nasal inflection often heard in pop vs. broad, throaty sounds preferred in operatic music, and all points between. Microphones and PA systems eliminated the need to project your voice as singers once knew it, but a full voice still sounds very different than the reedy singing of that third-chair soprano in your church choir who can't be heard at all without extreme close-mic amplification.
In fact, many of the truly great singers don't sing on a "perfect" tempered scale at all. They deliberately bend certain pitches away from strict piano tuning frequencies, which are not correct representations of what the scale should be. Singers who know how to make subtle changes of intonation will still outshine those who rely on these auto-tuners, even if the listener doesn't consciously understand why they sound better.
Is it me or did they shrink a little in the last movie?
Well, the thing is, Jolie herself already has bigger-than-average breasts for a woman her size to begin with (Implants?), bhile the Lara of the original games has enormous torpedoes jutting out from her chest.
The makers of the first film decided to compromise, by padding Jolie's boobs about half-way to Lara Croft size... and even that resulted in the most fake-looking breasts in Hollywood history. And that's really saying something!
The first movie was so insanely bad that there's no way I would consider watching the second one, but I would not be surprised if they got rid of the padding this time around.
In Cool Hand Luke? It's jam-packed with Christ references (and images of crosses.)
My favorite: During the egg-eating scene, when Luke seems like he's about to throw up, he goes to the sink and splashes water on his face... three times. That's right, he's baptizing himself.
The most obvious: After the egg-eating scene is over, he's laid out on the table with his arms outstretched as if he's being crucified.
More likely is that the project was green-lighted by an executive who believed they knew how to sell it, and then management changed hands during the development phase, so the Powers That Be who had taken charge by the time the game was released didn't know what to do with it. Happens all the time.
If God (or, for that matter, any god) wants to put an idea in somebody's head, why would the chosen vessel of this wisdom need to believe in Him for that to happen?
"Once you fixate on one number, you will see it everywhere you go!" -Saul, mentor to Max Cohen.
Pi was such an awesome movie. 216 has replaced 42 as my preferred choice for when I need to give an arbitrary number (because I lack the memory to have picked up the actual 216-digit number they used in the movie.)
Actually, when playing on sports teams, I tend to wear 37 if I have my choice. It was the number on Cool Hand Luke's prison jersey.
Slashdot Mirror
I had Paranoia games that killed off the entire party (all six clones of every player) before they even got out of the mission briefing room. Hell, one time I killed them off trying to get to the mission briefing, and a fun time was had by all.
I agree wholeheartedly.
That's why I'd rather own any one version of D&D than every "Baldur's Gate" computer game ever made. No computer game can compare to the infinite variety of pencil-and-paper gaming.
Oh yea, and you can get more length of entertainment, as well as more quality of entertainment, out of any RPG than you can out of any existing computer game. Unless you are one of those people that think re-playing the same 10 hours of Diablo II over and over again to be the most fun thing ever.
If the sales of ST:TNG, Buffy, and X-Files sets is anything to go by, this is simply not true. All of them outsold Anime imports like Bebop and Trigun in the US market, and the licensing fees for making a sub/dub import DVD is huge. First of all, you gotta pay all the original voice actors. Then, you gotta hire an English dub cast (because sales will take a big hit if an English track is not available on the disk... go figure.) Then, you get to watch half your profits go right down the toilet from people selling Hong Kong bootlegs of your show for a third of the price in the Amazon.com reseller's forums and on eBay. Anime has become big business, but not as big as you seem to think.
The Firefly series comes out on DVD soon, including the three un-aired episodes, and it is likely to make far more money from DVD sales than it ever did from the FOX network.
I think it looks a lot more like an unrolled surface from a micro-screen electric razor.
Now that Live has been up for a while, it's probably just a matter of time before X-Box hackers learn what Live is looking for to confirm it's legit, and come up with a mod chip that spoofs that.
The same reason you don't currently allow pedestrians on them.
Segways go about 5-8 MPH slower than a good athlete on a bike. If I were an LA cyclist, I would be pissed off to find my riding trails suddenly crammed with those things. At least powered scooters are thin.
If Segways ever start to become popular, then some cities might add paths for them, just like many cities have added bike paths. However, at $5000 for something that does not effectively replace cars, bicycles, or wheelchairs, I doubt that will happen any time soon. The only function Segways really can displace is pedestrian traffic... but since walking is free, and Segways cost a fortune, you won't see that catch on soon either.
One thing they pointed out was that downtown auto traffic is so snarled, that rapid delivery of small packages was best done by bicycle. Same for very large warehouse situations. Seems to me the Segway could enter those markets, were it more-reasonably priced.
You mean, if it were one-tenth of the current price, light enough to easily lift up a flight of sidewalk stairs, considerably faster, and didn't make you look like a total dork? Because then, sure. Otherwise, no.
Also, there's the office assistant lust factor: A thirtysomething female office assistant needs to have a package brought to her. Is she going to go with "SpeedyBike Bicycle Delivery", and have the package brought to her by a young guy who works out all day, every day, and will arrive wearing spandex shorts? Or will she go with "SegwayDeliveries-R-Us" and get the package from a fat retiree on a scooter?
The "average" speed of cars driving on downtown roads during rush hour includes stopping for traffic lights and slowing for congestion... both of which a Segway would need to do on a crowded urban sidewalk (assuming the city even lets them on the sidewalk, instead of on the street with the bicycles where they belong.)
In other words, you just compared the Segway's top potential speed to the real-world speed of cars in traffic. A completely invalid comparison. A Segway in the city during rush hour will go at almost exactly the same speed as the cars... and on a cold Minnesota day, with sleet pounding down on you, that would be completely intolerable.
Not to mention the fact that most cars are out of downtown traffic and flying down the interstate highway in a matter of blocks, at least in the Twin Cities area. A Segway might get me from the Metrodome to the Target Center in 10 minutes, but can it get me out to Lakeville (a distant suburb) in under 45? Obviously not.
Take notes, inventors who wish to change the world. No personal vehicle will ever replace the car for daily commutes in the US unless it offers the following:
1. A comfortable enclosed cab to protect from the elements.
2. A top speed that at least approaches one mile per minute, and do so reasonably safely and under control.
3. Enough passenger space for a mother of two to drop her kids off at day care on the way to the office.
4. Luggage space allowing enough room for a laptop case, a gym bag, maintenance parts for the vehicle (just like cars almost always have a spare tire, a jack, and jumper cables in the trunk).
5. A convenient way to keep it powered on demand - extended downtime to recharge batteries is not acceptable.
Until the "Segway 2.0" or whatever meets all five of those points, anybody who wants to buy it would need to own both that, and a car... which means that it will remain nothing more than a toy for yuppies.
Golf is expensive, but when I started playing ball (men's fastpitch softball, to be specific) in an amateur adult league, I started with a good $40 mitt and a hand-me down bat. League fees (for two different city leagues) were a total of $100 per season because our team had no sponsor. Since then, I've picked up a little more gear (my own batting helmet, a sliding pad for my left leg, steel cleats, etc.) but it's still nothing like what I've pissed away on gaming PC's. Batting practice is always free as you have a pitcher a bag full of old softballs, and a willingness to show up on a Saturday morning before the kid leagues take over the fields.
You are talking about highlight films. Somebody who hates watching baseball will still find it entertaining to watch movie of that Randy Johnson fastball that hit that dove that's been floating around the web for a few years. That doesn't mean that they would enjoy sitting through a nine-inning Diamondbacks game.
BTW: "Machinima" is supposed to refer to animated features made with game engines and tool boxes, like this stuff, not films of "professional" game-players in competition.
No.
I will gladly sit for three hours to watch a little-league soccer game if some friend of mine's kid is playing, or watch a rival fastpitch softball team playing in an exhibition tournament, or watch my local High School's basketball team play a game... but I would never, in a million years, sit and watch any of the same people play Quake for three hours.
If I won't even spend that much time watching somebody I care about playing, why in the hell would I consider watching a professional play!?
They can run all the banners they want, give premium members the right to see duplicate stories early, etc. I don't even mind the massive square ad they started putting in the middle of stories.
But the stories themselves should not be ads. Unless they want to make "Slashvertizements" a new category, so I can filter them out.
Apart from Simon's refreshing honesty, another fun element of the show was the guest judges. One week, they required all of the contestants to cover Smokie Robinson songs, and Smokie Robinson was added to the judge panel.
Anyway, ultimately it's just another "reality" TV show, 90% of which I don't care for either, so I can see why you didn't bother with it based on the weak previews. I just caught some of it while channel surfing once and found it exceeded my expectations, that's all I was saying. We've probably already discussed the topic longer than it really warrants, so let's just agree to disagree on this one, 'kay?
As far as how non-gently the performers "deserve" to be treated, what do YOU propose? What would be appropriate "criticism" for somebody who has the audacity to actually try to sing on stage, and not be good enough to entertain you?
Watch "Amateur Night At The Apollo" sometime, and you will see what cruel treatment of weak entertainers looks like. The contestants on American Idol, if anything, are coddled by the judges.
To borrow from a favorite movie, "I don't think it means what you think it means."
The word "distortion," when applied to sound, almost always refers to the failure of electronic devices to accurately reproduce an audio source signal.
If I get what you seem to be driving at, I think the word you are fishing for is "timbre," meaning the variations in wave shape which make one voice or instrument sound different from another voice or instrument playing the same pitch.
Is that an ugly spectacle? Maybe, but it's kind of an amplified sample of the actual vetting-out process that actual music-industry talent scouts go through every day, and I found it kind of interesting on that level.
Besides, when did we become a nation of such sensitive crybabies? It's not like these people are being beaten to death with sticks. They are just having their singing critiqued, and far more gently than they deserve more often than not.
It's like nobody knows how to cope with criticism anymore. I think we all need to re-watch Tom Hank's "there's no crying in baseball" rant from A League Of Their Own a few times, and learn to suck it up once in a while.
As Ben Franklin said, our critics are our friends, for they show us our faults.
It's kind of like if a kid is just barely good enough at basketball to get into a division-C college, and is not likely to grow taller that 5"11", and has no desire to develop passing and ball-handling skills, but dreams of being an NBA center. Are you doing him a favor by telling him to go for it? Obviously not. The nicest thing you could possibly do for that kid is to do whatever it takes to get it through his skull that he will never, ever play center in the NBA, so he damn well better get an education and make something else of himself.
The documentary "Hoop Dreams" shows some very good examples of what happens when nobody does that.
American Idol is really just a nation-wide karaoke contest, but I must admit that I enjoyed watching two or three episodes this year when it was on. That Simon Cowell guy is almost always 100% correct when he tells the singers how shitty they are.
The marketing wizards behind the show (of which, he is one, truth be told) kind of make him out to be like one of the "Bad Guys" in professional wrestling, but I'm always rooting for Simon to make the singers run off the stage crying. It almost makes up for hearing them sing.
Every musician who cares about their art needs to come to terms with the fact that 99% of their craft is practiced in the service of an entertainment industry that doesn't give a crap about artistic greatness. It's all about getting money out of the hands of listeners, and into the hands of promoters/patrons/labels/etc. Always has been. If Handel and Beethoven had to deal with this kind of shit in their day, what makes you so special?
If you want to be an "artist", the best thing you can do is just keep working at mastering your craft and not worry about the millions of dollars it seems that an army of inferior musicians are making. They are doing something which doesn't really resemble what you are doing... something which pays better. So either put on a miniskirt and join them *cough*Jewel*cough* or just be happy doing what you are doing. Either way, don't whine about it. Nobody else cares, and you can't make them.
Distortion, like chorus effects and envelope filters, is simply another option for your guitar's "voice." They don't make bad guitarists sound good, they just make bad guitarists sound distorted.
Back to the topic of vocal pitch correctors... I see this as kind of like drum machines. Do they make me appreciate Neil Peart any less? Nope. Likewise, people will still value somebody who can sing.
Also, there's a lot more to singing than pitch. There's phrasing, vibrato, dynamics, etc., all of which enhance the expression in performance. Also, there's the issue of nasal inflection often heard in pop vs. broad, throaty sounds preferred in operatic music, and all points between. Microphones and PA systems eliminated the need to project your voice as singers once knew it, but a full voice still sounds very different than the reedy singing of that third-chair soprano in your church choir who can't be heard at all without extreme close-mic amplification.
In fact, many of the truly great singers don't sing on a "perfect" tempered scale at all. They deliberately bend certain pitches away from strict piano tuning frequencies, which are not correct representations of what the scale should be. Singers who know how to make subtle changes of intonation will still outshine those who rely on these auto-tuners, even if the listener doesn't consciously understand why they sound better.
Well, the thing is, Jolie herself already has bigger-than-average breasts for a woman her size to begin with (Implants?), bhile the Lara of the original games has enormous torpedoes jutting out from her chest.
The makers of the first film decided to compromise, by padding Jolie's boobs about half-way to Lara Croft size... and even that resulted in the most fake-looking breasts in Hollywood history. And that's really saying something!
The first movie was so insanely bad that there's no way I would consider watching the second one, but I would not be surprised if they got rid of the padding this time around.
My favorite: During the egg-eating scene, when Luke seems like he's about to throw up, he goes to the sink and splashes water on his face... three times. That's right, he's baptizing himself.
The most obvious: After the egg-eating scene is over, he's laid out on the table with his arms outstretched as if he's being crucified.
More likely is that the project was green-lighted by an executive who believed they knew how to sell it, and then management changed hands during the development phase, so the Powers That Be who had taken charge by the time the game was released didn't know what to do with it. Happens all the time.
Here is the standard, "you would all know that this whole story is bullshit if you bothered to check snopes before posting," link.
Thank you, and good night.
If God (or, for that matter, any god) wants to put an idea in somebody's head, why would the chosen vessel of this wisdom need to believe in Him for that to happen?
-Saul, mentor to Max Cohen.
Pi was such an awesome movie. 216 has replaced 42 as my preferred choice for when I need to give an arbitrary number (because I lack the memory to have picked up the actual 216-digit number they used in the movie.)
Actually, when playing on sports teams, I tend to wear 37 if I have my choice. It was the number on Cool Hand Luke's prison jersey.