The parent comment would be insightful if you would state what economic freedoms the government has been taking away. I am not saying that you are incorrect, I am just saying that you are general and not convincing. But I also think that you are slightly incorrect. It is not the government taking away your freedoms, it is the government allowing the rich to take your freedoms.
But it does not matter because I disagree with your thesis. The reason a high school education is not valuable anymore is because almost everyone has one. The reason you and your spouse go to school and work is someone convinced women they could be educated too. We are competing for limited resources. Everyone wants a nice house in a nice part of town and families with dual income will pay more for it than a single income person. The end result is that in keeping up with the Jones's, a college education and dual income has become the status quo. Do you think that my parent's house they bought for $30k 25 years ago is worth $450k now because the government took away our economic rights? It is in grabbing for all we can that we screw over uneducated people.
I am not trying to say you don't make a good point, I just want to know how you reached that conclusion because I don't buy it. Education is a freedom that many choose to exercise because it better prepares them and makes them more economically valuable. College is expensive because it is a limited resource. But in the end the only way the government is to blame is not protecting us from the extremely rich and from ourselves.
Back to my original thought though, this is nothing new with numbers being misrepresented. Companies like to talk about shortages in worker supply in efforts to keep salaries low. You advertise a shortage to get more people interested in specializing in what you need. Now you have a bigger pool to choose from so you take the person that is qualified and will cost you the least. Economics do not lie. If there is a shortage a premium will be paid or substitute will be found.
A tear jerker is what Lucas called this blasphemy. How on earth can you possibly cry when every line delivered from Ian McDiarmid (Palpy) was vocally awkward. I know I couldn't. I was drawn out of the movie by every performance. I was drawn out of the movie by Ewan's good performance because it was so out of place. I sat there thinking "that's actually a good performance" instead of what was going on in the scene.
The security hologram scene was stupid looking. There was no time spent developing emotion. I wanted to feel for the characters and physically couldn't. You must have wanted it more than me.
The story had to be blatant (aka. Anakin had to verbally say why he was turning dark) or else you would never be able to infer what was going on. The real symptom of this movie (and the two before it) is that without blatantly being told what was happening, we would never know. The problem is that Lucas has no grasp of sublety.
Lucas is an incredibly bad director and writer. I will banket the statement by saying all bad acting performances were Lucas' fault. A New Hope was good because he was under enormous pressure to finish it. ESB and RoTJ were good because he had other people do the important work. These movies (and his bastardized remakes) are his vision. His vision sucks. He got lucky making Star Wars and got lucky with his timing to let the fan base create create an incredible universe. The story has not been his for a long time now and I don't think he has any right to go in and ruin it.
All that said, Episode III is by far the best of the prequels. But I also believe that all the "good reviews" of this movie have everything to with how pitiful the other two were.
Re:Cool ads, but I don't think they promote Firefo
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Firefox Promo Videos
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Yes, that and they really weren't funny. I am sorry if I am being snobby, but I thought they were predictable and the jokes rather tired (uh oh, is she going to eat something besides the candy bar?)
So yeah, not funny and not descriptive of the product. That should appeal to the demographic "people who are not already using Firefox." Overall well done I say.
This is absolutely rediculous. Bill Gates has amassed a fortune on the backs of and at the expense of others. MS business practice has put many others out of business.
What else are 2 people going to do with that kind of money? At this point being worldwide charitable is no longer a nice thing but is necessary to still call yourself a human being. If they sat on that fortune letting it do nothing I think it puts them at the level of tyrant for holding back.
Don't get me wrong, it is still a great thing that they do. So congratulations on continuing to realize what a fortunate life you have lived Bill, and using that realization to help those that have not been fortunate at all.
Or maybe it is just a figure of speech that the writer chose. It is called anthropomorphizing and it is really effective because it puts things in terms that we relate to.
Fine job everyone did to nit pick the language to turn this into a religious debate. Everyone knows that lefties stuck around so long because left handed pitchers can hide the ball longer on right handed batters making it harder to hit. They would win the big games and get the chicks thus propogating their own left handedness.
I agree with this. It seems that the reason the monkeys became workaholics is that they were paranoid that what they needed to do would not get done. I would much rather procrastinate and get bitten for being wrong about how long it would take for something to get done instead of living my life in complete terror that I was not going to be able to get anything done in time when in fact I was doing a tremendous amount of work.
Just as long as you understand that though you don't believe, it may still be absolutely right. And I think you are incorrect about "Religion doesn't stand up very well to scientific scrutiny to anyone who understands human nature." It does not stand up to your scrutiny and your understanding of human nature. Maybe there are many like you, but there are many that are not like you. I am a Christian for the reason that it make ultimate sense based on human nature as CS Lewis would agree. So please add these to your list of possibilities on this subject as they are on my list and they help me every day.
1. You really don't know about human nature. Your understanding is very narrow in scope. I know mine is because it inherently has to be.
2. You really don't know much about God. You may know tons about religion as people have tried to teach you or as you have tried to discover for yourself, but knowing religion is just an introduction. A starting point where you may search to understand. Religion is not understanding, it is only trying to descibe something that has grown and become inate in our understanding. What matters is if God really matters to you. Then you can find him.
I am having a pretty rough time finding artists myself. I am closed source but I have no capital. My plan is to have an artist that will take a gross percentage of sales but even that has been hard to find because I can offer nothing up front.
I was on an indie team that made a Mac RPG Atlas and we got artists to do exactly what I am talking about but getting them was by some weird process that appears to be closed right now. I would think that getting college aged people that are looking to build a portfolio is your best bet (and mine). I am currently trying to get on Raph 3d artists because it looks like they have a big list of people that you can look for folks wanting part time work. But so far I can't log in for some buggy reason.
That is all I have. I am sure that if you can find some people to work for free on your project, I can find people to work for possible future dividends...
Go get Crystal Space in source forge. That is what I am using. It has a large user base and the people that work on it I can only assume work like dogs. I have had great success so far in bringing my game to where it is with it.
Yeah, my critisism of the artists is when was it up to them to decide what was a work of art. As far as I am concerned they may as well try to force you to listen to the album in the order it was tracked so we could "appreciate" their art more correctly.
Their job is to submit the art. Let our dollars determine what was worth them creating. That's kind of a scary thought too judging on some of the crap that our dollars have kept around...
I thought all movies were already starting to look alike. Isn't "formulaic" an insult for movies? I guess research is being done to change bad to worse.
Ahhhhh! If only it did not work! I am sorry but I really have to blame people for this. This is what the music industry does already. Albums are produced rather than written. AND IT WORKS! People are very stupid and they buy them. It's the same damn song folks. Over and over again.
And people wonder why I seem to egotistical. I would rather not be, but these stats just fuel my fire. I need to lie down.
Instead of cutting my line, I just told SBC that I was going to cut my line because I had a cell phone. Amazingly enough, the lowest rate plan of $38 a month could be cut to $16 a month. Sure I did not get the 3 way calling or call waiting or long distance (which were required before), but I only use my land phone to make local calls to conserve my minutes anyway as I don't have the heftiest minute allotment.
So just as long as I don't get cancer from it, I would say cell phones rule. Get rid of land lines.
Yes, this technology is old, but when you lose a war you aren't allowed weapons for some time. Remember when they lost WWI? They were not allowed to have any armored vehicles. When they invaded Poland the Polish were so sure that the vehicles were cars with phony armor made of card board that they sent their cavalry to deal with it (real horses!).
I am sure that with a potato cannon army the Germans could be just as effective against Poland today. And if not they could scrape together the survivors and still take France.
I know of what you speak. My friends and I made a game and we did it for the mac. Our thinking is that the mac was a starved market so we sould get some notice. There are a couple of things to watch out for when you are a small group like us.
1. There is a chance you have a day job, like us. It took us 5 years from start to finish and the mac was more saturated with games by that time. Not to mention our technology was sub par. Therefor go for something simple like a puzzle but still be very innovative.
2. Marketing is king. We went through a publisher and people like them who have to make numbers for the quarter quickly get discouraged and pull marketing when the game is not doing well. I certainly don't blame them for that.
If you are curious to see the game I am talking about it is Atlas.
I am in the midst of making a new game on my own though I was not a programmer for the old one. I am going to try to use what I learned old one. I am still going to outsource art and sound but I am going to keep it simple for myself. Then I am going to be as creative and hard working as I can be to market the crap out of it and even possibly attempt to distribute it myself. Right now I am stuck on the programming part as I don't have much experience and I am trying to use Crystal Space for an engine but the learning curve is getting me. I hope this project does not drag out too far because of that.
I was wondering how EA even got on the list. I had a friend who was worked like a dog on a game until it was finished. Then the entire team minus some senior managers got the axe.
Maybe employee satisfaction does not count with them as they are no longer employees?
It makes sense that they could beat out 60% of the other companies, because he did say it was cool to be working on a game even if it was 70+ hours a week.
For all the prospective cancelling of FarScape that went on, Fox sure did cancel Firefly quickly.
I don't think this is particularly off topic and I know that Fox is not cable and really relies on ratings for advertising but I am pissed that Firefly is off the air after not much of a chance.
Maybe there is a trend or pattern emerging that people don't like to watch good shows. I think more accurately and not jokingly is I am finding a smaller demographic of people around me that like Science Fiction as I get older. At first it seemed odd, but even at my tech place of work less than a quarter of the people I know like Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Some of them did at one time but claim they grew out of it.
Anyone else notice that around them? I find it disturbing.
I was all set and ready to buy a 17" iMac... as soon as I could get one without having to get the superdrive.
Maybe sales would not slump if people were able to get what they really want? I know that makes for a manufacturing/production problem, but if there are more like me who absolutely won't buy one until I get a combination that I can deal with, it is the difference between selling an iMac and not selling an iMac.
Re:Brin's having fun and making a point
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David Brin On LOTR
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Brin's article did make me think. And this is what I thought:
LOTR is appealling because it is easy to identify the evil in the book. Brin makes some good points about not jumping to conclusions and who's perspective it is being written from, but it is dangerous to talk yourself out of thinking that something is truly evil when it is truly evil.
Sometimes things are really just that menacing and bad and for no good reason other than to prove that it is menacing and bad. Talking yourself out of it is like the German people who turned their heads for reasons of self preservation when something really bad was going on.
I am not saying don't ever think about anything, but realize that when you do you might also be sympathising with something that should get no sympathy.
Don't forget that game developers don't try to innovate as much as they try to make money. It is all about taking a good idea and repackaging it.
When quake became so popular we were innundated with FPS. I remember the first people that dared put realistic violence and ludeness and I thought that was cool. Mortal Kombat was so sweet when I first saw it. GTA was incredibly tongue in cheek and we loved it. Now the industry needs to learn that putting more or going over the next line is not what we want. It is a hard lesson to learn and it will take some game failures to learn it.
The reason we liked it in the first place was that it was something new. Miyamoto always gives something new. Gore and sex will die because it is a fad and people can only be tricked for so many years. Miyamoto is still around long after many fads have come and gone which says more than anything about what people really want.
Re:I JUST CALLED MY CABLE COMPANY and they said no
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Cable TV A La Carte?
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Yeah, I guess this ruling is good for some. But you can't get rid of regular cable channels for reduced price. I personally do not want the premium movie channels as I don't watch much TV. When I do I watch Fox, Comedy Central, and the History Channel. Maybe some A&E every once in a while.
The problem is that I can get local channels on cable for $14 or I can get everything for $50. There is nothing in between. I wish I could cut out at least some of those crappy channels even for $10 a month off. Obvious monopoly.
Consoles do have one thing going for them. It is a captured audience. What are you going to do with a console other than play console games? If you have a console you don't want to just waste that by not purchasing games. PC's can make you toast or clean your room if you don't want it running a game for you.
Because of a captured audience, you will rarely see a console game released for less than $50. Companies know this and see high dollar returns with captured audience and a much smaller competetive pool. So making console games is very lucritive. Only high end PC games start at $50 and they rarely stay that expensive for long.
But PC games will never die. I have read the controller issue and that will keep PCs alive. I have read about 12 year olds programming Visual Basic shareware games and as stupid as it might seem, that will also keep it alive. There are some fantastic games that come out of non-production house setups and as long as there are way more PCs than consoles out there (see arguement about usefulness apart from games). There will be a very strong PC game market.
Holy crap, The Postman was a good book. Well, it was when I read it in high school. I did not really know who Brin was but now I respect him even more. That is an excellent episode 3 idea he had. My only problem with the article is that he was too forgiving with episode 1. I am someone who can stand Jar-Jar and even liked the Ewoks. It just seems that with making a story and then directing it, Lucas is a small child. The only thing remotely interesting about episode 1 and 2 was episodes 4-6. He panders to the lowest emotions and then even does a bad job of that. I can't bring myself to believe that any of it is real because it does not act real. Everyone is terminally stupid. No one in the story can figure out anything. When they spent a good deal of movie time having Obi-Won trying to figure out where a certain planet (Kamino) had gone to, I was enfuriated when the answer was that trivial. It leads me to believe Lucas is not smart enough to come up with an actual problem that would require creativity to solve.
I just got done watching episode 4 (the original and not the load of re-released horse crap) so I am really just seething with contempt for the new episodes. At least with them there was a bit of cleverness and you cared about the characters.
There are several things that this anniversary reminds me what I hate about things here in the US.
1. Media pandering and dirty laundry abounds. Don't try to tell me how to feel about what is going on. I can do that for myself and it is insulting when you do.
2. The way American treats other countries and people because we are "always right." Those "right" actions being very wrong and American civilians dying for that. How about we actually try to be right. I think it can come down to a quality model. Doing it right up front will save untold expenses at the end. Instead we pay those untold expenses for what was done wrong in the past.
3. Future attacks. I almost expected to hear about something horrible when I woke up this morning. I fear more lives will be lost here on our soil because those who "represent" us are willing to kill regular people on their soil. We fight fire with fire and it makes more fire. On the other hand, it is hard to attack someone that cares about you. Why not invest in their people. Show them that we care by being there to back up our investment. So many times we help people and leave just so they can be punished for getting US aid. This goes back to actually "being right" and not just saying we are.
4. Loss of rights. I am not going to get Franklin's quote correct but those who are willing to give up freedom for security deserve niether. It sucks when we get attacked, but that does not mean that those responsible for the hatred towards us should get to call all the shots. I know they mean well, but until they get some follow through and start truly caring past our own borders, other countries will, understandably, dislike us.
I hope this will never happen again. It is nonsensicle for those that have died to have died. But I don't see how what we are doing now will prevent it. We are not an impenitrable box, we are a land of immigration of all sorts. That kind of land cannot be protected from subversives. You have to quash the reason for subversive activity to protect it.
We did something from high school notebooks to fruition. It was a wonderful Mac RPG called Atlas: The Gift of Aramai (Freeverse.com). Some times I would recommend keeping it all to paper. Especially if you and your unexperieced friends want to create something as content intensive as an RPG (go for a clever puzzle or something else that is repeatable.) But after five years and 8 people cycled through the team I am proud to say that we did it. And what can I say we got from it? I learned that making games is tough and in the end pretty unrewarding. That is why I am starting a new one:). I had to get new friends to do it though:(.
Slashdot Mirror
The parent comment would be insightful if you would state what economic freedoms the government has been taking away. I am not saying that you are incorrect, I am just saying that you are general and not convincing. But I also think that you are slightly incorrect. It is not the government taking away your freedoms, it is the government allowing the rich to take your freedoms.
But it does not matter because I disagree with your thesis. The reason a high school education is not valuable anymore is because almost everyone has one. The reason you and your spouse go to school and work is someone convinced women they could be educated too. We are competing for limited resources. Everyone wants a nice house in a nice part of town and families with dual income will pay more for it than a single income person. The end result is that in keeping up with the Jones's, a college education and dual income has become the status quo. Do you think that my parent's house they bought for $30k 25 years ago is worth $450k now because the government took away our economic rights? It is in grabbing for all we can that we screw over uneducated people.
I am not trying to say you don't make a good point, I just want to know how you reached that conclusion because I don't buy it. Education is a freedom that many choose to exercise because it better prepares them and makes them more economically valuable. College is expensive because it is a limited resource. But in the end the only way the government is to blame is not protecting us from the extremely rich and from ourselves.
Back to my original thought though, this is nothing new with numbers being misrepresented. Companies like to talk about shortages in worker supply in efforts to keep salaries low. You advertise a shortage to get more people interested in specializing in what you need. Now you have a bigger pool to choose from so you take the person that is qualified and will cost you the least. Economics do not lie. If there is a shortage a premium will be paid or substitute will be found.
This is the reason I still own Apple stock. It is only a matter of time before we have a movie and TV version of iTunes.
A tear jerker is what Lucas called this blasphemy. How on earth can you possibly cry when every line delivered from Ian McDiarmid (Palpy) was vocally awkward. I know I couldn't. I was drawn out of the movie by every performance. I was drawn out of the movie by Ewan's good performance because it was so out of place. I sat there thinking "that's actually a good performance" instead of what was going on in the scene.
The security hologram scene was stupid looking. There was no time spent developing emotion. I wanted to feel for the characters and physically couldn't. You must have wanted it more than me.
The story had to be blatant (aka. Anakin had to verbally say why he was turning dark) or else you would never be able to infer what was going on. The real symptom of this movie (and the two before it) is that without blatantly being told what was happening, we would never know. The problem is that Lucas has no grasp of sublety.
Lucas is an incredibly bad director and writer. I will banket the statement by saying all bad acting performances were Lucas' fault. A New Hope was good because he was under enormous pressure to finish it. ESB and RoTJ were good because he had other people do the important work. These movies (and his bastardized remakes) are his vision. His vision sucks. He got lucky making Star Wars and got lucky with his timing to let the fan base create create an incredible universe. The story has not been his for a long time now and I don't think he has any right to go in and ruin it.
All that said, Episode III is by far the best of the prequels. But I also believe that all the "good reviews" of this movie have everything to with how pitiful the other two were.
Yes, that and they really weren't funny. I am sorry if I am being snobby, but I thought they were predictable and the jokes rather tired (uh oh, is she going to eat something besides the candy bar?)
So yeah, not funny and not descriptive of the product. That should appeal to the demographic "people who are not already using Firefox." Overall well done I say.
This is absolutely rediculous. Bill Gates has amassed a fortune on the backs of and at the expense of others. MS business practice has put many others out of business.
What else are 2 people going to do with that kind of money? At this point being worldwide charitable is no longer a nice thing but is necessary to still call yourself a human being. If they sat on that fortune letting it do nothing I think it puts them at the level of tyrant for holding back.
Don't get me wrong, it is still a great thing that they do. So congratulations on continuing to realize what a fortunate life you have lived Bill, and using that realization to help those that have not been fortunate at all.
I still do not approve of how you got there.
Or maybe it is just a figure of speech that the writer chose. It is called anthropomorphizing and it is really effective because it puts things in terms that we relate to.
Fine job everyone did to nit pick the language to turn this into a religious debate. Everyone knows that lefties stuck around so long because left handed pitchers can hide the ball longer on right handed batters making it harder to hit. They would win the big games and get the chicks thus propogating their own left handedness.
I agree with this. It seems that the reason the monkeys became workaholics is that they were paranoid that what they needed to do would not get done. I would much rather procrastinate and get bitten for being wrong about how long it would take for something to get done instead of living my life in complete terror that I was not going to be able to get anything done in time when in fact I was doing a tremendous amount of work.
Just as long as you understand that though you don't believe, it may still be absolutely right. And I think you are incorrect about "Religion doesn't stand up very well to scientific scrutiny to anyone who understands human nature."
It does not stand up to your scrutiny and your understanding of human nature. Maybe there are many like you, but there are many that are not like you. I am a Christian for the reason that it make ultimate sense based on human nature as CS Lewis would agree. So please add these to your list of possibilities on this subject as they are on my list and they help me every day.
1. You really don't know about human nature. Your understanding is very narrow in scope. I know mine is because it inherently has to be.
2. You really don't know much about God. You may know tons about religion as people have tried to teach you or as you have tried to discover for yourself, but knowing religion is just an introduction. A starting point where you may search to understand. Religion is not understanding, it is only trying to descibe something that has grown and become inate in our understanding. What matters is if God really matters to you. Then you can find him.
I am having a pretty rough time finding artists myself. I am closed source but I have no capital. My plan is to have an artist that will take a gross percentage of sales but even that has been hard to find because I can offer nothing up front.
I was on an indie team that made a Mac RPG Atlas and we got artists to do exactly what I am talking about but getting them was by some weird process that appears to be closed right now. I would think that getting college aged people that are looking to build a portfolio is your best bet (and mine). I am currently trying to get on Raph 3d artists because it looks like they have a big list of people that you can look for folks wanting part time work. But so far I can't log in for some buggy reason.
That is all I have. I am sure that if you can find some people to work for free on your project, I can find people to work for possible future dividends...
Go get Crystal Space in source forge. That is what I am using. It has a large user base and the people that work on it I can only assume work like dogs. I have had great success so far in bringing my game to where it is with it.
Yeah, my critisism of the artists is when was it up to them to decide what was a work of art. As far as I am concerned they may as well try to force you to listen to the album in the order it was tracked so we could "appreciate" their art more correctly.
Their job is to submit the art. Let our dollars determine what was worth them creating. That's kind of a scary thought too judging on some of the crap that our dollars have kept around...
I thought all movies were already starting to look alike. Isn't "formulaic" an insult for movies? I guess research is being done to change bad to worse.
Ahhhhh! If only it did not work! I am sorry but I really have to blame people for this. This is what the music industry does already. Albums are produced rather than written. AND IT WORKS! People are very stupid and they buy them. It's the same damn song folks. Over and over again.
And people wonder why I seem to egotistical. I would rather not be, but these stats just fuel my fire. I need to lie down.
Instead of cutting my line, I just told SBC that I was going to cut my line because I had a cell phone. Amazingly enough, the lowest rate plan of $38 a month could be cut to $16 a month. Sure I did not get the 3 way calling or call waiting or long distance (which were required before), but I only use my land phone to make local calls to conserve my minutes anyway as I don't have the heftiest minute allotment.
So just as long as I don't get cancer from it, I would say cell phones rule. Get rid of land lines.
Yes, this technology is old, but when you lose a war you aren't allowed weapons for some time. Remember when they lost WWI? They were not allowed to have any armored vehicles. When they invaded Poland the Polish were so sure that the vehicles were cars with phony armor made of card board that they sent their cavalry to deal with it (real horses!).
I am sure that with a potato cannon army the Germans could be just as effective against Poland today. And if not they could scrape together the survivors and still take France.
I think this is more of a warning sign.
I know of what you speak. My friends and I made a game and we did it for the mac. Our thinking is that the mac was a starved market so we sould get some notice. There are a couple of things to watch out for when you are a small group like us.
1. There is a chance you have a day job, like us. It took us 5 years from start to finish and the mac was more saturated with games by that time. Not to mention our technology was sub par. Therefor go for something simple like a puzzle but still be very innovative.
2. Marketing is king. We went through a publisher and people like them who have to make numbers for the quarter quickly get discouraged and pull marketing when the game is not doing well. I certainly don't blame them for that.
If you are curious to see the game I am talking about it is Atlas.
I am in the midst of making a new game on my own though I was not a programmer for the old one. I am going to try to use what I learned old one. I am still going to outsource art and sound but I am going to keep it simple for myself. Then I am going to be as creative and hard working as I can be to market the crap out of it and even possibly attempt to distribute it myself. Right now I am stuck on the programming part as I don't have much experience and I am trying to use Crystal Space for an engine but the learning curve is getting me. I hope this project does not drag out too far because of that.
I was wondering how EA even got on the list. I had a friend who was worked like a dog on a game until it was finished. Then the entire team minus some senior managers got the axe.
Maybe employee satisfaction does not count with them as they are no longer employees?
It makes sense that they could beat out 60% of the other companies, because he did say it was cool to be working on a game even if it was 70+ hours a week.
For all the prospective cancelling of FarScape that went on, Fox sure did cancel Firefly quickly.
I don't think this is particularly off topic and I know that Fox is not cable and really relies on ratings for advertising but I am pissed that Firefly is off the air after not much of a chance.
Maybe there is a trend or pattern emerging that people don't like to watch good shows. I think more accurately and not jokingly is I am finding a smaller demographic of people around me that like Science Fiction as I get older. At first it seemed odd, but even at my tech place of work less than a quarter of the people I know like Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Some of them did at one time but claim they grew out of it.
Anyone else notice that around them? I find it disturbing.
I was all set and ready to buy a 17" iMac ... as soon as I could get one without having to get the superdrive.
Maybe sales would not slump if people were able to get what they really want? I know that makes for a manufacturing/production problem, but if there are more like me who absolutely won't buy one until I get a combination that I can deal with, it is the difference between selling an iMac and not selling an iMac.
Brin's article did make me think. And this is what I thought:
LOTR is appealling because it is easy to identify the evil in the book. Brin makes some good points about not jumping to conclusions and who's perspective it is being written from, but it is dangerous to talk yourself out of thinking that something is truly evil when it is truly evil.
Sometimes things are really just that menacing and bad and for no good reason other than to prove that it is menacing and bad. Talking yourself out of it is like the German people who turned their heads for reasons of self preservation when something really bad was going on.
I am not saying don't ever think about anything, but realize that when you do you might also be sympathising with something that should get no sympathy.
Don't forget that game developers don't try to innovate as much as they try to make money. It is all about taking a good idea and repackaging it.
When quake became so popular we were innundated with FPS. I remember the first people that dared put realistic violence and ludeness and I thought that was cool. Mortal Kombat was so sweet when I first saw it. GTA was incredibly tongue in cheek and we loved it. Now the industry needs to learn that putting more or going over the next line is not what we want. It is a hard lesson to learn and it will take some game failures to learn it.
The reason we liked it in the first place was that it was something new. Miyamoto always gives something new. Gore and sex will die because it is a fad and people can only be tricked for so many years. Miyamoto is still around long after many fads have come and gone which says more than anything about what people really want.
Yeah, I guess this ruling is good for some. But you can't get rid of regular cable channels for reduced price. I personally do not want the premium movie channels as I don't watch much TV. When I do I watch Fox, Comedy Central, and the History Channel. Maybe some A&E every once in a while.
The problem is that I can get local channels on cable for $14 or I can get everything for $50. There is nothing in between. I wish I could cut out at least some of those crappy channels even for $10 a month off. Obvious monopoly.
Consoles do have one thing going for them. It is a captured audience. What are you going to do with a console other than play console games? If you have a console you don't want to just waste that by not purchasing games. PC's can make you toast or clean your room if you don't want it running a game for you.
Because of a captured audience, you will rarely see a console game released for less than $50. Companies know this and see high dollar returns with captured audience and a much smaller competetive pool. So making console games is very lucritive. Only high end PC games start at $50 and they rarely stay that expensive for long.
But PC games will never die. I have read the controller issue and that will keep PCs alive. I have read about 12 year olds programming Visual Basic shareware games and as stupid as it might seem, that will also keep it alive. There are some fantastic games that come out of non-production house setups and as long as there are way more PCs than consoles out there (see arguement about usefulness apart from games). There will be a very strong PC game market.
Holy crap, The Postman was a good book. Well, it was when I read it in high school. I did not really know who Brin was but now I respect him even more. That is an excellent episode 3 idea he had. My only problem with the article is that he was too forgiving with episode 1. I am someone who can stand Jar-Jar and even liked the Ewoks. It just seems that with making a story and then directing it, Lucas is a small child. The only thing remotely interesting about episode 1 and 2 was episodes 4-6. He panders to the lowest emotions and then even does a bad job of that. I can't bring myself to believe that any of it is real because it does not act real. Everyone is terminally stupid. No one in the story can figure out anything. When they spent a good deal of movie time having Obi-Won trying to figure out where a certain planet (Kamino) had gone to, I was enfuriated when the answer was that trivial. It leads me to believe Lucas is not smart enough to come up with an actual problem that would require creativity to solve.
I just got done watching episode 4 (the original and not the load of re-released horse crap) so I am really just seething with contempt for the new episodes. At least with them there was a bit of cleverness and you cared about the characters.
I gotta lie down.
There are several things that this anniversary reminds me what I hate about things here in the US.
1. Media pandering and dirty laundry abounds. Don't try to tell me how to feel about what is going on. I can do that for myself and it is insulting when you do.
2. The way American treats other countries and people because we are "always right." Those "right" actions being very wrong and American civilians dying for that. How about we actually try to be right. I think it can come down to a quality model. Doing it right up front will save untold expenses at the end. Instead we pay those untold expenses for what was done wrong in the past.
3. Future attacks. I almost expected to hear about something horrible when I woke up this morning. I fear more lives will be lost here on our soil because those who "represent" us are willing to kill regular people on their soil. We fight fire with fire and it makes more fire. On the other hand, it is hard to attack someone that cares about you. Why not invest in their people. Show them that we care by being there to back up our investment. So many times we help people and leave just so they can be punished for getting US aid. This goes back to actually "being right" and not just saying we are.
4. Loss of rights. I am not going to get Franklin's quote correct but those who are willing to give up freedom for security deserve niether. It sucks when we get attacked, but that does not mean that those responsible for the hatred towards us should get to call all the shots. I know they mean well, but until they get some follow through and start truly caring past our own borders, other countries will, understandably, dislike us.
I hope this will never happen again. It is nonsensicle for those that have died to have died. But I don't see how what we are doing now will prevent it. We are not an impenitrable box, we are a land of immigration of all sorts. That kind of land cannot be protected from subversives. You have to quash the reason for subversive activity to protect it.
We did something from high school notebooks to fruition. It was a wonderful Mac RPG called Atlas: The Gift of Aramai (Freeverse.com). Some times I would recommend keeping it all to paper. Especially if you and your unexperieced friends want to create something as content intensive as an RPG (go for a clever puzzle or something else that is repeatable.) :). I had to get new friends to do it though :(.
But after five years and 8 people cycled through the team I am proud to say that we did it. And what can I say we got from it? I learned that making games is tough and in the end pretty unrewarding. That is why I am starting a new one