The problem with economics (or at least with traditional capital-based economics) is that its an imperfect science which only has a solid basis on immediate supply and immediate demand. To be sure, we're not certain how much oil we've got left. We know its limited, and could possibly run out within the century, but beyond that, its guess work. I generally do not trust an imperfect science based on vague guesswork, but then, I'm funny that way::grin::
Oh, and I never said money was a capitalist concept. I simply said that modern capitalist societies tend to forget that money has no inherent value of itself, which leads to the idea that a significant drain on resources is fine provided the monetary compensation is equivalent.
Yes, its good that the SUV owners need to pay more to fuel their vehicles, I don't dispute. But whether or not gas-guzzling vehicles should be promoted as they are currently being is another question entirely, and that's what I was trying to get at.
And I don't disagree with you at all about gas prices/tax. I've been saying the same thing for quite some time.
My ultimate problem with the "we'll find a replacement for gas when we run out" argument is that its a little uncertain. Our search for "a better source of energy" should not be dependent on when our older source dries up. That's like questioning why everyone started switching to IBM-PC compatibles when the Apple II's were still working fine. And, my reasoning goes, there's no reason we should drain all of our nonrenewable resources anyway, as conservation never hurt anyone. Vehicles with better gas mileage than SUVs can be (and are) made.
Ah. I stand humbly corrected, then. What I am (relatively) sure of is that the ports were designed for an American audience, and released in America first (I think, though I may be wrong about this, that the port was actually done by Square USA).
And there's no port of FFIX anywhere. And given the relatively quality of previous ports, that's not really much of a loss....
The ecosystem is designed to work with a bit of leeway. Yes, we currently have enough resources to provide relatively well for the majority of people, but its on what amounts to a hair trigger. Massive climate or harvest problems in even one region would damage the food supply for almost everyone. Plus, the sort of wholesale churning of the environment is damaging, as it can seriously alter the nature of the ecosystem in the first place.
Case-in-point: even if we have enough wood, metals, etc. for everyone to have "nice houses and nice cars", we won't forever. Although both resources are ultimately renewable, they are not at our present rate of consumption at the level you suggest. Populations keep increasing, and the demand goes up. You increase the population to facilitate production for an increasing number, and soon you run out of resources with which to produce. And we can't wait to have the resources replenish, either: current calculations include the sum total of millions of years of resource buildup, be it in mineral deposits or forest ecosystems. They quite simply don't get rebuilt that quickly.
And you're wrong to think that the population problems in places other than the US and Europe aren't taken in consideration. The water table of the Indian subcontinent has been steadily declining, and is expected to be more or less exhausted within the next 100 years. Not to mention the wildly unsanitary conditions, political strife, and so on in the region. That shows the risks of overpopulation. Its extreme, but similar things are happening everywhere, if not at anywhere near the speed.
There's a problem here, which can be summed up quite simply:
Internal combustion engines use gasoline, not money, to burn!
If I paid for all of the world's remaining deposits of coal, oil, petroleum, etc. at a fair price I'd certainly have paid for the resources I'm using, but that wouldn't really matter, as every current automobile on the roads would be rendered completely useless.
Money is a foil. It is used to facilitate the transfer of goods and services. It is not a resource in its own right, and it ultimately cannot be used to replace non-renewable resources.
And that's leaving aside issues of pollution and safety. Throwing money at an issue doesn't make it any less of an issue, and to think that it does is the ultimate folly of a modern capitalist economy.
I have doubts whether I should hold my breath for Dragon Quest VIII. Sure, Dragon Quest VII looks like a great game, but its quite possibly the most delayed console game of all time (it was originally scheduled for release shortly after Final Fantasy VII). And I believe Square, as a company, still outperforms Enix, even if the Dragon Quest series outsells the Final Fantasy series.
Hmm? Not to my knowledge. There are some connections, admittedly, aside from recurring features (like summoned monsters, magic, etc.), and Final Fantasy V is a conceptual remake of Final Fantasy III (the NES version, unreleased in America, not the SNES US version, which was Final Fantasy VI). But, for the most part, they are entirely seperate.
Let me begin by saying I don't really believe either side is holding a grudge, at least, not a serious one. But Nintendo's actions do tend to lead one to that conclusion more easily.
Square has never once said anything overtly negative in regards to Nintendo without provocation before the split that can't be prescribed to traditional PR manuevering. Most of the "evidence" of a grudge seems to come for dubious readings of development decision (not producing for a system should not be immediately read as an attack on the company that produces it).
Nintendo, if nothing else, has Yamauchi's comments. But, to be fair, this isn't entirely his fault. Hironobu Sakaguchi, it seems, announced his interest in developing for the Game Boy Advance before consulting Nintendo. Nintendo, justifiably feeling that they had the right to know about plans for their system, had to be firm lest the media dogs run wild. Yamauchi's problem was in his approach: he could of put down the possibility without the ad hominem severity he did. But, then again, he's not known as for being particularly cool or collected....
The relationship between Square and Sony, as you suggest, is subject to some of the most gross oversimplification in the video game industry today. But the situation, from my understanding, is quite different from the way you see it.
Yeah, Nintendo's stated policy of "it's the games, stupid" is well-known, but meaningless. It's a common PR hook that really doesn't give any explanation of anything. Nintendo has been around long enough to know that quality is subjective, and that gamers will forgive hundreds of bad games for the odd masterpiece, under the right situations. Which isn't to say that Nintendo is wrong to push it that way, or that no other company would do the same, just that its a rather superficial way of looking at things.
And no one has yet explained why Nintendo couldn't have stuck with their policy had they gone with a CD-based format. The reasons for that seem to be largely financial, and not really laudable: with a cartridge format, Nintendo owns the media, and can exact a much larger revenue from developers. Not entirely unique in the business world, again, so not deeply damning.
There is nothing to back up the "A/V first, game second" attitude that is so often attributed to Square, either. Yes, they were interested in the multimedia potential of next gen hardware, but so what? There was nothing about the potential of the PSX to produce "A/V masterpieces" that precluded the ability to produce good games for it. This attitude seems to suggest that somehow Square was tied to Nintendo, and that switching was some massive betrayal of trust. And that's just silly. Square was free to go wherever they wanted. Nintendo was free to produce whatever system they wanted. They didn't agree on the details, and seperated. There's no villain there.
And it ignores perhaps the most important fact of the switchover, anyway, which was a simple issue of release. When Square switched, the PSX was already out, and development tools were available, while the N64 was still on the horizon. They'd been holding off for quite some time already (look at the delay between Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII even as is), and to wait for the N64's premiere wouldn't have sat well with Square's stockholders. Similar delays chased away other companies, at least temporarily, and contributed to the software drought the N64 experienced after its inception.
And, you're right, its not all Yamauchi's fault. But he's notorious for letting his mouth run wild, and saying things Nintendo, as a company, later regretted. He's an easy target, and such a fun guy to poke fun at.::grin::
And, for the love of God, rereleasing the first three Final Fantasy games on the WonderSwan Color was in no way an attack on Nintendo. They were drawn to the WSC by promises of interoperability with the PS2 by Bandai, and, again, by a desire to get the games out now rather than wait for the release of the GBA. Yeah, they didn't talk about a rerelease of the SNES games on GBA until later, but, considering their goal was to rerelease the games in sequence, it didn't make much sense to talk about them beforehand.
It's really no one's fault, save for some bad PR moves on both sides (Sakaguchi shouldn't have stated he wanted to develop for the GBA before talking to Nintendo, which more or less forced Yamauchi to take a hardline stance or appear weak, and Yamauchi still shouldn't have lashed out with the force he did). It's never been personal. Heck, I'm curious as to where the idea that Square has any vendetta against Nintendo in the first place came from, anyway. There's nothing solid they've ever said or done to support this, and the most anyone has to go by is vague and circumstantial evidence (Square also didn't order dev kits for the Dreamcast, does this mean they have a vendetta with Sega?).
People pick favorites, and a lot of people were burnt and felt betrayed when Square jumped to the Playstation. They, understandably, transfer their own feelings onto the companies, even when the actual situation is significantly different.
Actually, there's every indication Square knew exactly what they were doing in going for the WonderSwan Color rather than the Game Boy Advance, and it doesn't neccessarily have anything to do with any percieved rivalry with Nintendo (which, apart from the near-senile ramblings of Yamauchi, has likely been blown way out of proportion anyway).
The WonderSwan gave Square several bonuses:
It was due it before the Game Boy Advance, and would thus allow them to get their games out before the rush.
Bandai had already announced plans for interoperability between the WonderSwan and the Playstation 2. Given that Square is still tied more strongly to Sony than any other console manufacturer, even with the multiplatform announcement, it made sense for them to get their foot in the door.
Bandai would've killed for them. Nintendo didn't really need them (and, from Yamauchi's comments, didn't really want them). The Game Boy Advance already had big name developers, not to mention Nintendo themselves, ready with the "killer app". The WonderSwan allowed Square an exposure they wouldn't, and couldn't, have gotten on the GBA.
And the WonderSwan hasn't been doing poorly in Japan, thanks in large part to Square's participation. The Final Fantasy rereleases have propelled the system, and the games, to almost record sales, and although the GBA is probably outselling it now, it was hardly a disaster. The one problem is that it seems unlikely that the system will ever reach American shores. But given that the market for nostalgic rereleases is generally larger in Japan than the US, they didn't take any major damage.
And, keep in mind, Square has openly bandied about the possibility of releasing games for the GBA. It's Nintendo that's rebuffed the prospect entirely (which is their right, really).
As for treating non-Japanese gamers as second-class: well, yeah. Duh. Square is a Japanese company. The console industry is significantly larger in Japan, not to mention that Square's stock-in-trade, console RPGs, have always been bigger draws in Japan. But they haven't sold the US short, in any case. The US got the special edition of Final Fantasy VII (our regular edition) months before Japan, and Japan, to my knowledge, still hasn't seen release of either of the PC ports. Their position isn't really illogical.
My understanding of Square's partnership with EA is that they simply handle release and marketing by providing the resources so that both companies can reach markets they had trouble with previously (Square gets an American distributor, and EA gets a Japanese distributor). So, theoretically, EA could decide to go exclusively Xbox and Square could go exclusively PS2, and the partnership would remain, since EA doesn't need to work with the PS2, design-wise, to release Square's games, and Square doesn't need to work with the Xbox to release EA's.
I don't think we really have enough to go on in regards to Sony and Square. There's no indication Sony has any problem with Square going multiplatform, provided they keep releasing for Sony's platforms. They used to have an exclusivity clause, but that ran out back in early 1998, and it seemed brought about only because, at the time, Sony was releasing all of Square's games (before Square EA's formation).
No, both Final Fantasy 7 and 8 were ported by Square. Look at the credits on the thing.
The confusion is in who released it. For quite some time, Square had no American distributor. Their early Playstation releases were released by Sony (look at the intro sequences for Final Fantasy VII: "Sony Computer Entertainment America Presents"), but since Sony wasn't interested in releasing the game for the PC, Square struck a deal with Eidos to handle it. But Eidos had little to no input on the development end of things.
By the time of Final Fantasy VIII's release, things had changed. Square had struck a distribution deal with EA wherein they formed a joint company called Square EA that would release all of Square's efforts in America (the Japanese equivalent, EA Square, released all of EA's games in Japan). Every American-released Square game since Xenogears for the PSX has been released by them, including Final Fantasy VIII for both PC and PSX.
Eidos's only involvement with Final Fantasy VIII was for the European release. Square EA only dealt with American distribution, so Square stuck another deal with Eidos for that market. Again, Eidos had no developmental input.
And they really were awful ports. The port of Final Fantasy VIII didn't even give you a menu-based option to exit the game, and you were forced to Alt+F4 or Ctrl+Q to get out of the thing. Both also used the PSX memory card save format, which was just... odd (and annoying, since it preserved the 15 save limit present in the console versions, despite the fact that such a limitation made no sense on the PC). In addition, there were a number of weird hardware problems: the palettes in FF8 didn't display right on nVidia cards, and only worked for FF7 with patching. In addition, a much touted DLS midibank was included with FF8; only later was it realized that the game had no option to actually utilize it....
Square's original marketing strategy was to rerelease the entire series in some format:
Final Fantasy 1 - 3 are in the process of being released for the WonderSwan Color in Japan, complete with updated graphics.
They had initially wanted to release Final Fantasy 4 - 6 on the GBA, but Nintendo, it seems (and Yamauchi in particular) rebuffed them. Don't know what's going on now.
The three Playstation games, 7 - 9 are going to be rereleased for the PS2.
And the Game Boy Final Fantasy titles are a bit misleading. Neither was originally part of the series, and were renamed to include the title for American release. The Final Fantasy Legend games were known as SaGa in Japan (and were the precursors to the Romancing SaGa series on the Japanese SNES/SFC, which never were released here, and the SaGa Frontier games on the PS), and Final Fantasy Adventure was entitled Seiken Densetsu (Legend of the Holy Sword). Two of its sequels were eventually released in the US as Secret of Mana and Legend of Mana.
Nintendo was just inept in ushering in the N64. They delayed far too long, and several companies, Square included, could not reasonably be expected to sit idly by until Nintendo decided to get its act together. The gap between Final Fantasy VI (3 in the United States) and Final Fantasy VII is still longer than any other gap between games in the series' history: it would only have been longer if they'd waited for Nintendo. Their stockholders would not have been happy.
Then again, that's not to say that both sides didn't start acting like decapitated chickens after the fact, mind you. But this announcement isn't all that surprising: if FFXI is going to be a MMORPG, it only makes sense to open up as far as possible. I'm actually more shocked Nintendo had anything to do with it, given their oft-stated opinion of Square. But even then, I'm not that shocked....
Why do verbose boot messages matter when you don't even see them?
'Cause if you're trying to go through the startup logs to figure out what went wrong, it gets to be a little ridiculous.
Linus isn't arguing that a nifty graphical startup screen is the answer; his reasoning doesn't even seem particularly aimed at the "casual" user, who may be scared of verbosity, but designed to streamline things for the real power user.
The semantic sense. The reason the rights listed in the Constitution cannot be superceded, the logic goes, is because they were not given by the government in the first place. Or, in other words, the government giveth the DMCA, the government taketh away the DMCA, and all is well. It can backtrack, revise, or utterly trash whatever it wants, except a handful of rights which are seen as inherent elements of life. To take these away ultimately constitute a criminal action.
Much of the rest of the world has adopted a similar stance, and the United Nations (ideally, if not in practice) is guided by a similar document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Laws can be circumvented or changed, but because the ideology of this country, not the laws themselves, say so, our Constitutional rights cannot be.
The founding fathers, furthermore, were not, strictly speaking, for state enroachment into private enterprise, at least not in the modern capitalistic sense. Keep in mind that numerous essential services were government run from day one, including the postal service. Several founding fathers, most notably Franklin, supported the idea of government patronage of the arts.
The founders were ultimately forced to at least appear to take a "hands off" approach because of the situation at the time. The individual states, still wary of losing their autonomy to the federal government, weren't inclined to a new system wherein they had little say. Nothing would have projected this quite so powerfully than the government stepping in and controlling enterprise operating from the individual states. But, at the time, the founders recognized that a system of loose central authority, as practiced under the Articles of Confederation, didn't work, particularly as the nation was trying to build up an independent economic infrastructure. The government needed to regulate and direct private industry, and they did so, they merely pretended they didn't. And they've been doing much the same thing, ever since.
It wasn't socialism, it wasn't capitalism. Hell, in the strictest sense, it wasn't mercantilism, although it was closer to that than anything else. It was a clear transitory stage that defies modern classification. It's difficult to say exactly when America became a solidly capitalistic entity, but I would personally point to Jackson's refusal to recharter the National Bank. I've heard similar arguments for after the Civil War. In the end, America's never been capitalist, in the strict, Adam Smith sense, although I suppose the late 19th century would come closest.
The problem, it seems to me, is that, from our lofty vantage point here at Slashdot, we tend to forget that the highest form of network connection that the vast majority of computer users in America have these days remains in the form of an analog modem.
Even higher end broadband solutions don't match the speed of a traditional hard drive, and won't for some time. Even when they do, for that matter, one has to allow time for the tech to become not just available, but common. And this involves an update of the communications infrastructure of the entire country. It'll happen sooner or later, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I'd say at least five years for the network hardware to be available, and another five for the NC to really take off.
And I'm not sure it's safe to say that the "future" of computing lies in the NC, anyway. There are clear advantages, but clear disadvantages, as well. Aside from potential privacy issues, there's another layer of potential mishaps: if the network isn't rock solid, the entire enterprise seems to be inviting disaster. And, in some cases, I think a PC will always be preferrable, if only for the tinkerer.
Corporations aren't entirely evil, you know. Sometimes, the people involved in them actually want to provide good products and services that help others while helping themselves. That's not wrong, is it?
Of course. And a good number of the radicals responsible for the French Revolution just wanted to topple a absolutist, abusive monarchy. The fact that they then ushered in one of the most bloody periods in European history doesn't mean their intentions weren't good.
I don't doubt that there are corporations who want to do good out there. I also don't doubt that a fair number of them actually do. And unlike a number of my fellow leftist / socialists, I take a much more traditionalist approach to my creed, in that I view capitalism and corporatism as neccessary, ultimately for the reasons you state: it builds a strong industrial / informational infrastructure that non-market based systems can't.
However, the fact remains that one bad egg tends to spoil the batter. Corporations have, and corporations will, continue to abuse their power, and that's something I cannot, in good conscience, endorse. Like any large concentration of power, corporations are given to corruption. And the market has been shown to be sluggish, at best, in responding to social pressure, and outright unconcerned with anything other than the majority (often at the expense of the minority). Ultimately, I have more faith in a democratic governmental system than a free market system in addressing problems, be they evil or just mistakes. I'd rather have a democratic government addressing my needs and concerns than the whim of the market.
Obviously, since I do live in America, and recognize that most people don't agree with me. But hey, what are you going do? I'll just be sitting here, agitating as best I can, until I can make everyone agree with me. Or until Bill Gates wills me his entire fortune. Either one, really.::grin::
How state and local governments manage themselves is, ultimately, not under the jurisdiction of the federal government. The United States is a republic. It has always been concieved of as a republic. In a true democracy, all decisions are made by the people themselves. The best we've managed here is to hold frequent elections to appoint people to make our decisions for us. Yes, referendums exist, but pretty much only on the state and local level.
The fact that local governments don't model their systems the same way as the national government doesn't make the U.S. a democracy. It may make your town a democracy (and not ever local government works this way, either, particularly in larger urban and suburban areas), however.
And the East India Company is not, by any means, "thousands of years" old. And, though technically a corporation, it is not exactly equatable to, say, Microsoft. It operated under relatively close scrutiny of the government, ultimately folded when said government withdrew its charter, and, for all intents and purposes, acted simply as a mercantilist arm of the state. There's a few federally-run corporations around today that are similar, though they down operate anywhere near the same level.
People forget that the United States's economy was not originally envisioned as capitalist. Adam Smith was only just making his debut at the time of the Revolutionary War, and most of the framers of the Constitution were far more interested in the then-dominant mercantile system of Europe, wherein the government ultimately tolerated private industry not because it spurred competition or developed a healthy market, but because it allowed the state to further its own interests without overextending itself. Both capitalism and socialism ultimately rushed into fill the void that was left when mercantilism disintegrated as an economic system. In a sense, both have strong roots in the mercantile system, but neither is recognizably the same system.
My point? Although modern, capitalist corporations share the same terminology with premodern mercantile corporations, they're not really the same thing.
Oh, come on. I would have hoped we had moved beyond the rather blind and simple-minded "we're are alike" phase of social critique.
"Proletariat workers" and "capitalists" (bourgeoisie) are drawn from the same stock, sure. And they're certainly not diametrically opposed. But the different natures of their social situation mean they work for slightly different things. In a worst-case scenario, workers are simply another form of raw material. A savvy employer may know to manage his resources well, but not every employer is savvy, and even that doesn't neccessarily prevent the most egregious problems.
To suggest that there are, ultimately, differences in what employers and employees want does not imply some sort of overwhelming class warfare. Heck, the fact that there are significant differences within this strata is what makes unions neccessary. If nothing else, they present a way to communicate between interests, and allow the employer to address the major concerns of his/her employees.
Sure, it doesn't always work that way. And sometimes the most votes won't win you the presidency::grin::, but rather than dismiss the entire system as unworkable, a more sensible solution would be to recognize why unions exist, and then try to correct any faults with the implementation. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The on-line community quits handing out accolades based on technical skill alone - we need to start evaluating the ends to which people use their skills, not just the skills themselves. The techie community has long buried its head in the sand over this issue (perhaps because of its close association with the Defense Industry and some unresolved guilt therefrom), but people, there's more here to judge a person on. To use a bad example: Hitler was one of the most efficient and charismatic leaders of the past century. Nazi Germany had probably the best-run (ie most efficient at carrying out stated goals) government in a very long time. Should we emulate them? Admire them?
*ahem Nazi Germany was not the most efficient government of the twentieth century, by any means. They just liked to make people think they were. There's a number of examples, but perhaps most importantly was the fact that they did not, in fact, manage to win WWII.
But that aside, good point. On the other hand, technical achievement does deserve some mention. If nothing else, under an ideal system, having a few techno-saavy mavericks who do manage to break a system bring a problem into light and allow it to be repaired. It's a cliche, and it still has some rather questionable elements, but I hope you catch my drift. It shouldn't be the only consideration, but it should remain a factor. Or, in other words, a sense of technological morality should become part of the equation, as much to stimulate achievement as weed out abuse.
No, it wouldn't. A picture of a pipe is a representation of a real-life object which shares the neccessary number of characteristics with other objects defined as "pipe" to be likewise referred to as a pipe. It is designed to look like a pipe, but it is not three dimensional, it cannot be used to redirect a flow of water, and so forth.
If I had a pipe which had burst, and therefore did not operate as it was intended to do, it would still, in some sense, be a pipe, albeit a broken one. A game of Quake3 with cheaters is still a game of Quake3. It is defined as such. It still attempts to represent the same things a non-cheaters game attempts to represent. The presence of cheaters may defeat this attempt, but it is still "a game of Quake3", in the same sense that a broken pipe is still a pipe, if inoperative.
Put another way: non-cheaters are more concerned with suspension of disbelief, and willing to accept the implied limitations of the system. To do otherwise breaks the illusion of reality and destroys the player's enjoyment. Cheaters are cognizant, first and foremost, of the fact that the game is ultimately just a computer program. Because they cheat doesn't mean they somehow destroy their enjoyment of the game, its just that said enjoyment arises differently.
This of course, only holds really true for single-player gaming. The issue, of course, is how this affects online gaming. I have been known to cheat on games, but I wouldn't cheat on an online game. It's rude, because it allows me to enjoy the game at the expense of the enjoyment of others. "My right to swing my fist ends at your nose", etc.
The problem with Mozilla is that it still can't entirely get the whole UI integration thing working just right. Don't get me wrong: I understand that its probably not their highest priority, given that they are aiming for crossplatform operability, but, on Windows at least, they couldn't even get the damned thing to inherit system color schemes until 0.8.
I use Mozilla. I like Mozilla. But Mozilla is not at the point where I would recommend it to the casual, mostly computer illiterate, user. It's just ugly.
Then again, I said the same thing about MS Explorer/IE when they insisted on making the menu bar into a draggable toolbar, so there's no accounting for taste, I suppose.
The argument that its the fault of natural selection that we're destroying the earth's ecosystem is painful. Yeah, in an ideal system, natural selection would allow a species to adapt to the catastrophic (in the sense of sudden, abrupt, and severe) changes to the ecosphere wrought by our actions. Likewise, in an ideal system, no computer would ever crash, and no documents would ever get lost. But natural selection, though quite resilient, isn't perfect. Every indication is that we've pushed it to its limits. It doesn't allow for adaptation quickly enough to adapt to our changes.
And, again, like it or not, we can't pretend that natural selection excuses us from responsibility for our actions. If we're such a bloody intelligent species, we should recognize that we've got to exercise some responsibility. I could easily keep opening up new processes of Netscape on my computer until it drained my system resources to almost nothing and ultimately crashed the machine, but I'm sure as hell not going to go bitch that its the computer's fault, when I knew what it could handle in the first place, and purposefully chose to disregard it.
No one's ever suggested that anyone wants to seriously damage the planet's ecosystem, but that doesn't mean we couldn't blunder into that situation anyway. The point of this article was that we've done it before, and there's no reason to suspect we can't do it again.
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Oh, and I never said money was a capitalist concept. I simply said that modern capitalist societies tend to forget that money has no inherent value of itself, which leads to the idea that a significant drain on resources is fine provided the monetary compensation is equivalent.
Yes, its good that the SUV owners need to pay more to fuel their vehicles, I don't dispute. But whether or not gas-guzzling vehicles should be promoted as they are currently being is another question entirely, and that's what I was trying to get at.
And I don't disagree with you at all about gas prices/tax. I've been saying the same thing for quite some time.
My ultimate problem with the "we'll find a replacement for gas when we run out" argument is that its a little uncertain. Our search for "a better source of energy" should not be dependent on when our older source dries up. That's like questioning why everyone started switching to IBM-PC compatibles when the Apple II's were still working fine. And, my reasoning goes, there's no reason we should drain all of our nonrenewable resources anyway, as conservation never hurt anyone. Vehicles with better gas mileage than SUVs can be (and are) made.
And there's no port of FFIX anywhere. And given the relatively quality of previous ports, that's not really much of a loss....
Case-in-point: even if we have enough wood, metals, etc. for everyone to have "nice houses and nice cars", we won't forever. Although both resources are ultimately renewable, they are not at our present rate of consumption at the level you suggest. Populations keep increasing, and the demand goes up. You increase the population to facilitate production for an increasing number, and soon you run out of resources with which to produce. And we can't wait to have the resources replenish, either: current calculations include the sum total of millions of years of resource buildup, be it in mineral deposits or forest ecosystems. They quite simply don't get rebuilt that quickly.
And you're wrong to think that the population problems in places other than the US and Europe aren't taken in consideration. The water table of the Indian subcontinent has been steadily declining, and is expected to be more or less exhausted within the next 100 years. Not to mention the wildly unsanitary conditions, political strife, and so on in the region. That shows the risks of overpopulation. Its extreme, but similar things are happening everywhere, if not at anywhere near the speed.
Internal combustion engines use gasoline, not money, to burn!
If I paid for all of the world's remaining deposits of coal, oil, petroleum, etc. at a fair price I'd certainly have paid for the resources I'm using, but that wouldn't really matter, as every current automobile on the roads would be rendered completely useless.
Money is a foil. It is used to facilitate the transfer of goods and services. It is not a resource in its own right, and it ultimately cannot be used to replace non-renewable resources.
And that's leaving aside issues of pollution and safety. Throwing money at an issue doesn't make it any less of an issue, and to think that it does is the ultimate folly of a modern capitalist economy.
I have doubts whether I should hold my breath for Dragon Quest VIII. Sure, Dragon Quest VII looks like a great game, but its quite possibly the most delayed console game of all time (it was originally scheduled for release shortly after Final Fantasy VII). And I believe Square, as a company, still outperforms Enix, even if the Dragon Quest series outsells the Final Fantasy series.
Hmm? Not to my knowledge. There are some connections, admittedly, aside from recurring features (like summoned monsters, magic, etc.), and Final Fantasy V is a conceptual remake of Final Fantasy III (the NES version, unreleased in America, not the SNES US version, which was Final Fantasy VI). But, for the most part, they are entirely seperate.
Square has never once said anything overtly negative in regards to Nintendo without provocation before the split that can't be prescribed to traditional PR manuevering. Most of the "evidence" of a grudge seems to come for dubious readings of development decision (not producing for a system should not be immediately read as an attack on the company that produces it).
Nintendo, if nothing else, has Yamauchi's comments. But, to be fair, this isn't entirely his fault. Hironobu Sakaguchi, it seems, announced his interest in developing for the Game Boy Advance before consulting Nintendo. Nintendo, justifiably feeling that they had the right to know about plans for their system, had to be firm lest the media dogs run wild. Yamauchi's problem was in his approach: he could of put down the possibility without the ad hominem severity he did. But, then again, he's not known as for being particularly cool or collected....
Yeah, Nintendo's stated policy of "it's the games, stupid" is well-known, but meaningless. It's a common PR hook that really doesn't give any explanation of anything. Nintendo has been around long enough to know that quality is subjective, and that gamers will forgive hundreds of bad games for the odd masterpiece, under the right situations. Which isn't to say that Nintendo is wrong to push it that way, or that no other company would do the same, just that its a rather superficial way of looking at things.
And no one has yet explained why Nintendo couldn't have stuck with their policy had they gone with a CD-based format. The reasons for that seem to be largely financial, and not really laudable: with a cartridge format, Nintendo owns the media, and can exact a much larger revenue from developers. Not entirely unique in the business world, again, so not deeply damning.
There is nothing to back up the "A/V first, game second" attitude that is so often attributed to Square, either. Yes, they were interested in the multimedia potential of next gen hardware, but so what? There was nothing about the potential of the PSX to produce "A/V masterpieces" that precluded the ability to produce good games for it. This attitude seems to suggest that somehow Square was tied to Nintendo, and that switching was some massive betrayal of trust. And that's just silly. Square was free to go wherever they wanted. Nintendo was free to produce whatever system they wanted. They didn't agree on the details, and seperated. There's no villain there.
And it ignores perhaps the most important fact of the switchover, anyway, which was a simple issue of release. When Square switched, the PSX was already out, and development tools were available, while the N64 was still on the horizon. They'd been holding off for quite some time already (look at the delay between Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII even as is), and to wait for the N64's premiere wouldn't have sat well with Square's stockholders. Similar delays chased away other companies, at least temporarily, and contributed to the software drought the N64 experienced after its inception.
And, you're right, its not all Yamauchi's fault. But he's notorious for letting his mouth run wild, and saying things Nintendo, as a company, later regretted. He's an easy target, and such a fun guy to poke fun at.::grin::
And, for the love of God, rereleasing the first three Final Fantasy games on the WonderSwan Color was in no way an attack on Nintendo. They were drawn to the WSC by promises of interoperability with the PS2 by Bandai, and, again, by a desire to get the games out now rather than wait for the release of the GBA. Yeah, they didn't talk about a rerelease of the SNES games on GBA until later, but, considering their goal was to rerelease the games in sequence, it didn't make much sense to talk about them beforehand.
It's really no one's fault, save for some bad PR moves on both sides (Sakaguchi shouldn't have stated he wanted to develop for the GBA before talking to Nintendo, which more or less forced Yamauchi to take a hardline stance or appear weak, and Yamauchi still shouldn't have lashed out with the force he did). It's never been personal. Heck, I'm curious as to where the idea that Square has any vendetta against Nintendo in the first place came from, anyway. There's nothing solid they've ever said or done to support this, and the most anyone has to go by is vague and circumstantial evidence (Square also didn't order dev kits for the Dreamcast, does this mean they have a vendetta with Sega?).
People pick favorites, and a lot of people were burnt and felt betrayed when Square jumped to the Playstation. They, understandably, transfer their own feelings onto the companies, even when the actual situation is significantly different.
The WonderSwan gave Square several bonuses:
- It was due it before the Game Boy Advance, and would thus allow them to get their games out before the rush.
- Bandai had already announced plans for interoperability between the WonderSwan and the Playstation 2. Given that Square is still tied more strongly to Sony than any other console manufacturer, even with the multiplatform announcement, it made sense for them to get their foot in the door.
- Bandai would've killed for them. Nintendo didn't really need them (and, from Yamauchi's comments, didn't really want them). The Game Boy Advance already had big name developers, not to mention Nintendo themselves, ready with the "killer app". The WonderSwan allowed Square an exposure they wouldn't, and couldn't, have gotten on the GBA.
And the WonderSwan hasn't been doing poorly in Japan, thanks in large part to Square's participation. The Final Fantasy rereleases have propelled the system, and the games, to almost record sales, and although the GBA is probably outselling it now, it was hardly a disaster. The one problem is that it seems unlikely that the system will ever reach American shores. But given that the market for nostalgic rereleases is generally larger in Japan than the US, they didn't take any major damage.And, keep in mind, Square has openly bandied about the possibility of releasing games for the GBA. It's Nintendo that's rebuffed the prospect entirely (which is their right, really).
As for treating non-Japanese gamers as second-class: well, yeah. Duh. Square is a Japanese company. The console industry is significantly larger in Japan, not to mention that Square's stock-in-trade, console RPGs, have always been bigger draws in Japan. But they haven't sold the US short, in any case. The US got the special edition of Final Fantasy VII (our regular edition) months before Japan, and Japan, to my knowledge, still hasn't seen release of either of the PC ports. Their position isn't really illogical.
I don't think we really have enough to go on in regards to Sony and Square. There's no indication Sony has any problem with Square going multiplatform, provided they keep releasing for Sony's platforms. They used to have an exclusivity clause, but that ran out back in early 1998, and it seemed brought about only because, at the time, Sony was releasing all of Square's games (before Square EA's formation).
The confusion is in who released it. For quite some time, Square had no American distributor. Their early Playstation releases were released by Sony (look at the intro sequences for Final Fantasy VII: "Sony Computer Entertainment America Presents"), but since Sony wasn't interested in releasing the game for the PC, Square struck a deal with Eidos to handle it. But Eidos had little to no input on the development end of things.
By the time of Final Fantasy VIII's release, things had changed. Square had struck a distribution deal with EA wherein they formed a joint company called Square EA that would release all of Square's efforts in America (the Japanese equivalent, EA Square, released all of EA's games in Japan). Every American-released Square game since Xenogears for the PSX has been released by them, including Final Fantasy VIII for both PC and PSX.
Eidos's only involvement with Final Fantasy VIII was for the European release. Square EA only dealt with American distribution, so Square stuck another deal with Eidos for that market. Again, Eidos had no developmental input.
And they really were awful ports. The port of Final Fantasy VIII didn't even give you a menu-based option to exit the game, and you were forced to Alt+F4 or Ctrl+Q to get out of the thing. Both also used the PSX memory card save format, which was just... odd (and annoying, since it preserved the 15 save limit present in the console versions, despite the fact that such a limitation made no sense on the PC). In addition, there were a number of weird hardware problems: the palettes in FF8 didn't display right on nVidia cards, and only worked for FF7 with patching. In addition, a much touted DLS midibank was included with FF8; only later was it realized that the game had no option to actually utilize it....
- Final Fantasy 1 - 3 are in the process of being released for the WonderSwan Color in Japan, complete with updated graphics.
- They had initially wanted to release Final Fantasy 4 - 6 on the GBA, but Nintendo, it seems (and Yamauchi in particular) rebuffed them. Don't know what's going on now.
- The three Playstation games, 7 - 9 are going to be rereleased for the PS2.
And the Game Boy Final Fantasy titles are a bit misleading. Neither was originally part of the series, and were renamed to include the title for American release. The Final Fantasy Legend games were known as SaGa in Japan (and were the precursors to the Romancing SaGa series on the Japanese SNES/SFC, which never were released here, and the SaGa Frontier games on the PS), and Final Fantasy Adventure was entitled Seiken Densetsu (Legend of the Holy Sword). Two of its sequels were eventually released in the US as Secret of Mana and Legend of Mana.Then again, that's not to say that both sides didn't start acting like decapitated chickens after the fact, mind you. But this announcement isn't all that surprising: if FFXI is going to be a MMORPG, it only makes sense to open up as far as possible. I'm actually more shocked Nintendo had anything to do with it, given their oft-stated opinion of Square. But even then, I'm not that shocked....
Linus isn't arguing that a nifty graphical startup screen is the answer; his reasoning doesn't even seem particularly aimed at the "casual" user, who may be scared of verbosity, but designed to streamline things for the real power user.
Much of the rest of the world has adopted a similar stance, and the United Nations (ideally, if not in practice) is guided by a similar document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Laws can be circumvented or changed, but because the ideology of this country, not the laws themselves, say so, our Constitutional rights cannot be.
The founding fathers, furthermore, were not, strictly speaking, for state enroachment into private enterprise, at least not in the modern capitalistic sense. Keep in mind that numerous essential services were government run from day one, including the postal service. Several founding fathers, most notably Franklin, supported the idea of government patronage of the arts.
The founders were ultimately forced to at least appear to take a "hands off" approach because of the situation at the time. The individual states, still wary of losing their autonomy to the federal government, weren't inclined to a new system wherein they had little say. Nothing would have projected this quite so powerfully than the government stepping in and controlling enterprise operating from the individual states. But, at the time, the founders recognized that a system of loose central authority, as practiced under the Articles of Confederation, didn't work, particularly as the nation was trying to build up an independent economic infrastructure. The government needed to regulate and direct private industry, and they did so, they merely pretended they didn't. And they've been doing much the same thing, ever since.
It wasn't socialism, it wasn't capitalism. Hell, in the strictest sense, it wasn't mercantilism, although it was closer to that than anything else. It was a clear transitory stage that defies modern classification. It's difficult to say exactly when America became a solidly capitalistic entity, but I would personally point to Jackson's refusal to recharter the National Bank. I've heard similar arguments for after the Civil War. In the end, America's never been capitalist, in the strict, Adam Smith sense, although I suppose the late 19th century would come closest.
Even higher end broadband solutions don't match the speed of a traditional hard drive, and won't for some time. Even when they do, for that matter, one has to allow time for the tech to become not just available, but common. And this involves an update of the communications infrastructure of the entire country. It'll happen sooner or later, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I'd say at least five years for the network hardware to be available, and another five for the NC to really take off.
And I'm not sure it's safe to say that the "future" of computing lies in the NC, anyway. There are clear advantages, but clear disadvantages, as well. Aside from potential privacy issues, there's another layer of potential mishaps: if the network isn't rock solid, the entire enterprise seems to be inviting disaster. And, in some cases, I think a PC will always be preferrable, if only for the tinkerer.
I don't doubt that there are corporations who want to do good out there. I also don't doubt that a fair number of them actually do. And unlike a number of my fellow leftist / socialists, I take a much more traditionalist approach to my creed, in that I view capitalism and corporatism as neccessary, ultimately for the reasons you state: it builds a strong industrial / informational infrastructure that non-market based systems can't.
However, the fact remains that one bad egg tends to spoil the batter. Corporations have, and corporations will, continue to abuse their power, and that's something I cannot, in good conscience, endorse. Like any large concentration of power, corporations are given to corruption. And the market has been shown to be sluggish, at best, in responding to social pressure, and outright unconcerned with anything other than the majority (often at the expense of the minority). Ultimately, I have more faith in a democratic governmental system than a free market system in addressing problems, be they evil or just mistakes. I'd rather have a democratic government addressing my needs and concerns than the whim of the market.
Obviously, since I do live in America, and recognize that most people don't agree with me. But hey, what are you going do? I'll just be sitting here, agitating as best I can, until I can make everyone agree with me. Or until Bill Gates wills me his entire fortune. Either one, really. ::grin::
The fact that local governments don't model their systems the same way as the national government doesn't make the U.S. a democracy. It may make your town a democracy (and not ever local government works this way, either, particularly in larger urban and suburban areas), however.
And the East India Company is not, by any means, "thousands of years" old. And, though technically a corporation, it is not exactly equatable to, say, Microsoft. It operated under relatively close scrutiny of the government, ultimately folded when said government withdrew its charter, and, for all intents and purposes, acted simply as a mercantilist arm of the state. There's a few federally-run corporations around today that are similar, though they down operate anywhere near the same level.
People forget that the United States's economy was not originally envisioned as capitalist. Adam Smith was only just making his debut at the time of the Revolutionary War, and most of the framers of the Constitution were far more interested in the then-dominant mercantile system of Europe, wherein the government ultimately tolerated private industry not because it spurred competition or developed a healthy market, but because it allowed the state to further its own interests without overextending itself. Both capitalism and socialism ultimately rushed into fill the void that was left when mercantilism disintegrated as an economic system. In a sense, both have strong roots in the mercantile system, but neither is recognizably the same system.
My point? Although modern, capitalist corporations share the same terminology with premodern mercantile corporations, they're not really the same thing.
"Proletariat workers" and "capitalists" (bourgeoisie) are drawn from the same stock, sure. And they're certainly not diametrically opposed. But the different natures of their social situation mean they work for slightly different things. In a worst-case scenario, workers are simply another form of raw material. A savvy employer may know to manage his resources well, but not every employer is savvy, and even that doesn't neccessarily prevent the most egregious problems.
To suggest that there are, ultimately, differences in what employers and employees want does not imply some sort of overwhelming class warfare. Heck, the fact that there are significant differences within this strata is what makes unions neccessary. If nothing else, they present a way to communicate between interests, and allow the employer to address the major concerns of his/her employees.
Sure, it doesn't always work that way. And sometimes the most votes won't win you the presidency ::grin::, but rather than dismiss the entire system as unworkable, a more sensible solution would be to recognize why unions exist, and then try to correct any faults with the implementation. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
But that aside, good point. On the other hand, technical achievement does deserve some mention. If nothing else, under an ideal system, having a few techno-saavy mavericks who do manage to break a system bring a problem into light and allow it to be repaired. It's a cliche, and it still has some rather questionable elements, but I hope you catch my drift. It shouldn't be the only consideration, but it should remain a factor. Or, in other words, a sense of technological morality should become part of the equation, as much to stimulate achievement as weed out abuse.
If I had a pipe which had burst, and therefore did not operate as it was intended to do, it would still, in some sense, be a pipe, albeit a broken one. A game of Quake3 with cheaters is still a game of Quake3. It is defined as such. It still attempts to represent the same things a non-cheaters game attempts to represent. The presence of cheaters may defeat this attempt, but it is still "a game of Quake3", in the same sense that a broken pipe is still a pipe, if inoperative.
Put another way: non-cheaters are more concerned with suspension of disbelief, and willing to accept the implied limitations of the system. To do otherwise breaks the illusion of reality and destroys the player's enjoyment. Cheaters are cognizant, first and foremost, of the fact that the game is ultimately just a computer program. Because they cheat doesn't mean they somehow destroy their enjoyment of the game, its just that said enjoyment arises differently.
This of course, only holds really true for single-player gaming. The issue, of course, is how this affects online gaming. I have been known to cheat on games, but I wouldn't cheat on an online game. It's rude, because it allows me to enjoy the game at the expense of the enjoyment of others. "My right to swing my fist ends at your nose", etc.
I use Mozilla. I like Mozilla. But Mozilla is not at the point where I would recommend it to the casual, mostly computer illiterate, user. It's just ugly.
Then again, I said the same thing about MS Explorer/IE when they insisted on making the menu bar into a draggable toolbar, so there's no accounting for taste, I suppose.
Well, to be sure, Paul probably deserves more credit that Jesus himself, but, hey, I'm getting way off-topic....
And, again, like it or not, we can't pretend that natural selection excuses us from responsibility for our actions. If we're such a bloody intelligent species, we should recognize that we've got to exercise some responsibility. I could easily keep opening up new processes of Netscape on my computer until it drained my system resources to almost nothing and ultimately crashed the machine, but I'm sure as hell not going to go bitch that its the computer's fault, when I knew what it could handle in the first place, and purposefully chose to disregard it.
No one's ever suggested that anyone wants to seriously damage the planet's ecosystem, but that doesn't mean we couldn't blunder into that situation anyway. The point of this article was that we've done it before, and there's no reason to suspect we can't do it again.