On the other hand, not that many males are portrayed realistically either. Seen NFL Street Big? Yeah, those gorillas are realistic.
But lack of realism to what end? In male characters, the abandonment of realism is towards enhancing the sense of machismo - that is, to make a man more manly, make him stronger, make him more capable.
When women are portrayed unrealistically, it is not to enhance their strength so much as to enhance their perceived beauty. The disconnect between us saying "guys aren't realistic and I don't care" and women saying "girls are unrealistic and it pisses me off" is that the female characters are unrealistic in a way that does not enhance the strengths of women in a way that is considered complementary.
The unrealistic man is big and strong and can take on alien hordes. The unrealistic woman is usually just a pair of large tits.
Some female game characters have certainly bucked that trend, but the majority are unrealistic solely for the benefit of salivating male players.
Now, I'm no CES keynote historian, but have past Gates keynotes been this much of a Microsoft product demonstration? I was expecting a State Of The Industry kind of presentation and instead just watched a seriously long marketing pitch.
I've been a home player for about a year now and have sunk some serious time and money into this game. From buying consoles specifically for DDR to importing to modding to buying and building more durable hard pads - it's a fun hobby.
As far as arcade play goes... I've done that only once.
And the sentiment keeps shifting. When the ISPs were being attacked by the *AA's, everybody (including the EFF) cried, "Not fair! They're not responsible! Go after the actual infringers!"
And now that they've been going after the actual infringers, both the EFF and the/. crowd are still upset.
I'm sorry, but if one's justification for infringing copyright is that it's the only way to get their money's worth, my suggestion would be to just stop being such a damn consumer. If you only like two songs on a CD, it doesn't mean that one has some sort of moral authority to download them. Just live without them.
Most infringers that I know, however, do it just because they like to have lots of things. Even if they are things they'll never actually consume. They just like to be able to boast of having huge media collections (there's absolutely no other reason why anybody would have a shared folder full of Ace of Base videos as somebody did at the last LAN party I attended). For some reason, everybody is building archives and using them to build recognition among their peers so that when somebody says, "Oh man, did you see that SNL sketch with Jeopardy and that guy playing Sean Connery?", they can step up and say, "Yeah. I have it right here. You want it?"
The only way to get around that sense of prestige and purpose is to maintain a huge central store of all forms of media that everybody can access instantaneously. Until that happens, local archivists will continue to exist.
The difference is the person in the mo-cap suit. Andy Serkis doing all the motion capture, on set acting, and voice acting for Gollum is a performance capture - his particular performance is cap'd, digitized, and used.
Orc #2304, on the other hand, is captured probably by the same person who did Orc #182, Orc #5003, and possibly Orc #9. That person's involvement with the character is only in the motion capture and they do not provide any dramatic elements like voice or characterization. That, it would seem, would be straight-up mo-cap.
Performance capture can probably get you an award. Mo-cap, not so much.
My nearly 3 year old son has CP and, as yet, still can't even sit up by himself. So, at some point, he is going to require a power wheelchair for mobility.
In order to get him ready for that eventuality (and to have somebody with whom I can play Q3 - I admit it), I blew the dust off of an old PlayStation fighter controller - large form factor, stick controller, large buttons - and hooked it up to my PC. Using it, he is learning how to manipulate the joystick for forward, back, left, and right movements.
My hope is that once he has that concept of movement mastered, he will be able to apply it to a similar stick on a wheelchair.
My secondary hope is that he'll chase me around the level during LAN play.:)
Two items were stuck in my head after reading Glaser's responses.
First - RealPlayer 10, the last time I installed it, actually required users to register an account at the Real website before the installation could occur. Is this no longer the case? If not, great. If so, that seems pretty invasive to me, and neither WMP nor QuickTime require that of their users.
Second - All hail Helix and everything. It's great that there is media support for *NIXes, but why isn't there a slimmed down, ad free version of Helix for Windows? Is it just that none of the thousands of Helix Community developers is interested in developing that or is there some other reason?
The sad thing is that now people will be Googling for their credit card numbers to be sure they're 'safe', but doing so means their credit card number will show up in the list of things people are Googling.
I remember quite well the hype surrounding Habitat. As a QuantumLink subscriber, I looked forward to its release because I thought a graphical interface for user communication was the coolest thing ever.
Habitat was lauded in all the major C=64 magazines of the time, but then sort of disappeared, only to materialize in the form of QuantumLink's Club Caribe. Club Caribe itself didn't last very long (2 years, according to the paper), possibly because it was a premium content feature (that is, you were charged above and beyond your monthly QuantumLink service charge in order to use it). It was also quite feature limited in comparison to the original promised Habitat feature set.
It's interesting that you would see this as some sort of threat to the art of the DJ.
I see it as no more than a PS2 sample mixer with a few more bells and whistles than old titles like NewBeat Trancemission and Mixman Studio. Both had an emphasis on live play, since their initial releases didn't do much for the ability to save and edit creations. But both were toys.
And so is DJBox.
To me, it looks like a fun distraction for a while. I've always been envious of DJs, but I don't have the time or the money to invest in becoming good at it. So if I can spend $40 and be able to 'play DJ', then that's sufficient for me. Later on, I can go and listen to somebody who has some *real* talent and who knows what they're doing.
It isn't as though DDR has driven me to try out for Stomp.
The choice problem is a big deal. My LAN group is pretty small (around 15 people) and it is an amazing thing when we get get half of the people to buy the same game. As a result, we still play Quake 3 as it is the game everybody has. Oh, and CS.
Back in the Quake and Quake 2 days, it was never a question of "What do we want to play next?" No, you just played Quake for hours on end and had a blast. Was that just the age of FPS innocence or something?
Watch out for that warranty. My in-laws recently tried to get warranty service on their GE refrigerator.
It was going to cost $100 for the service call and $70 an hour for the technician to check it out, even if the problem was covered by the warranty. They were also informed that nobody could look at it for about 17 days. That's a long time to be without a refrigerator/freezer.
Considering the fact that the tech probably wouldn't be in a hurry, would be motivated to find issues that wouldn't be covered, and would be looking to sell them parts and labor above the minimum, the in-laws decided to just buy a new refrigerator.
Install Steam on a gaming capable machine. Then, install a Steam CS LAN dedicated server on another machine.
Now, log into your Steam account on the gaming machine and connect to the LAN dedicated server. If both machines happen to have Internet access while having internal IPs (10.x.x.x, 192.168.x.x), you can't play on your own server.
And to make the AC a double-dumbass, Fox last night ran two episodes of the Simpsons followed by two episodes of Malcolm. So his statement that the original poster was wrong... is wrong.
Your $500 investment is typically outdated in 2 to 3 years, requiring another $500 investment if your motherboard won't support the latest and greatest hardware to play the latest and greatest games.
By comparison, there are still games being published for my ancient gray PSX. My initial investment there has gone a long, long way.
And in all that time, my PSX has never required maintenance, security patches, driver installs, OS upgrades (that had to be installed by me, anyway), or hardware upgrades. I've never had to troubleshoot a flaky power supply, and I've certainly never had to adjust graphics settings on the games to make them playable.
Now, granted, I have a bunch of other consoles, through which I am 'upgrading' my capabilities, but each one cost about the same price as a mid-level graphics card and have been just as reliable as that old PSX.
So yes, you can game on a cheap computer or you can game on a cheap console. But be prepared to put at least $300 of your time into keeping that PC operable. How long do you spend tweaking graphics settings when you pop in that new game? Whatever the amount, it's a lot more than when you pop a game into a console.
I game on both platforms, but when I want a quick game, I go straight for the console. Fast boot time, no login, I press 'On' and the game is there.
When I want a game with the latest graphics or vastly more multiplayer options, I go with the PC.
Slashdot Mirror
Because people generally don't give a shit about stuff like that? Just a guess.
As long as manufacturers are making money, they're happy. And as long as PSP owners are having fun, they're happy.
It's only the /.'ers who would think twice about mem card formats and their proprietary nature.
Well, isn't this just something. Who needs peril sensitive sunglasses when you can have a peril sensitive nervous system?
Anakin? He's got it easy. Poor Count Dooku can't use fingerprints, hand veins, or retinal scans (as he now lacks a head).
Wow... It's a good thing they weren't able to get P2P outlawed or else they'd not be able to use this distribution method.
I think it's encouraging that they're trying to find solutions that don't simply result in the wholesale destruction of technologies.
Even when it was later marked down, it still hovered around the $500 mark.
It seemed worth it at the time to play Way of the Warrior, but I don't think I'd spend that much money on a console again.
This has to be the worst comment I've ever seen posted on Slashdot. Congratulations.
But lack of realism to what end? In male characters, the abandonment of realism is towards enhancing the sense of machismo - that is, to make a man more manly, make him stronger, make him more capable.
When women are portrayed unrealistically, it is not to enhance their strength so much as to enhance their perceived beauty. The disconnect between us saying "guys aren't realistic and I don't care" and women saying "girls are unrealistic and it pisses me off" is that the female characters are unrealistic in a way that does not enhance the strengths of women in a way that is considered complementary.
The unrealistic man is big and strong and can take on alien hordes. The unrealistic woman is usually just a pair of large tits.
Some female game characters have certainly bucked that trend, but the majority are unrealistic solely for the benefit of salivating male players.
Now, I'm no CES keynote historian, but have past Gates keynotes been this much of a Microsoft product demonstration? I was expecting a State Of The Industry kind of presentation and instead just watched a seriously long marketing pitch.
I've been a home player for about a year now and have sunk some serious time and money into this game. From buying consoles specifically for DDR to importing to modding to buying and building more durable hard pads - it's a fun hobby.
As far as arcade play goes... I've done that only once.
And now that they've been going after the actual infringers, both the EFF and the /. crowd are still upset.
I'm sorry, but if one's justification for infringing copyright is that it's the only way to get their money's worth, my suggestion would be to just stop being such a damn consumer. If you only like two songs on a CD, it doesn't mean that one has some sort of moral authority to download them. Just live without them.
Most infringers that I know, however, do it just because they like to have lots of things. Even if they are things they'll never actually consume. They just like to be able to boast of having huge media collections (there's absolutely no other reason why anybody would have a shared folder full of Ace of Base videos as somebody did at the last LAN party I attended). For some reason, everybody is building archives and using them to build recognition among their peers so that when somebody says, "Oh man, did you see that SNL sketch with Jeopardy and that guy playing Sean Connery?", they can step up and say, "Yeah. I have it right here. You want it?"
The only way to get around that sense of prestige and purpose is to maintain a huge central store of all forms of media that everybody can access instantaneously. Until that happens, local archivists will continue to exist.
The difference is the person in the mo-cap suit. Andy Serkis doing all the motion capture, on set acting, and voice acting for Gollum is a performance capture - his particular performance is cap'd, digitized, and used.
Orc #2304, on the other hand, is captured probably by the same person who did Orc #182, Orc #5003, and possibly Orc #9. That person's involvement with the character is only in the motion capture and they do not provide any dramatic elements like voice or characterization. That, it would seem, would be straight-up mo-cap.
Performance capture can probably get you an award. Mo-cap, not so much.
My nearly 3 year old son has CP and, as yet, still can't even sit up by himself. So, at some point, he is going to require a power wheelchair for mobility.
:)
In order to get him ready for that eventuality (and to have somebody with whom I can play Q3 - I admit it), I blew the dust off of an old PlayStation fighter controller - large form factor, stick controller, large buttons - and hooked it up to my PC. Using it, he is learning how to manipulate the joystick for forward, back, left, and right movements.
My hope is that once he has that concept of movement mastered, he will be able to apply it to a similar stick on a wheelchair.
My secondary hope is that he'll chase me around the level during LAN play.
Two items were stuck in my head after reading Glaser's responses.
First - RealPlayer 10, the last time I installed it, actually required users to register an account at the Real website before the installation could occur. Is this no longer the case? If not, great. If so, that seems pretty invasive to me, and neither WMP nor QuickTime require that of their users.
Second - All hail Helix and everything. It's great that there is media support for *NIXes, but why isn't there a slimmed down, ad free version of Helix for Windows? Is it just that none of the thousands of Helix Community developers is interested in developing that or is there some other reason?
The sad thing is that now people will be Googling for their credit card numbers to be sure they're 'safe', but doing so means their credit card number will show up in the list of things people are Googling.
Not when you're trying to communicate with orbiting spacecraft.
I remember quite well the hype surrounding Habitat. As a QuantumLink subscriber, I looked forward to its release because I thought a graphical interface for user communication was the coolest thing ever.
Habitat was lauded in all the major C=64 magazines of the time, but then sort of disappeared, only to materialize in the form of QuantumLink's Club Caribe. Club Caribe itself didn't last very long (2 years, according to the paper), possibly because it was a premium content feature (that is, you were charged above and beyond your monthly QuantumLink service charge in order to use it). It was also quite feature limited in comparison to the original promised Habitat feature set.
It's interesting that you would see this as some sort of threat to the art of the DJ.
I see it as no more than a PS2 sample mixer with a few more bells and whistles than old titles like NewBeat Trancemission and Mixman Studio. Both had an emphasis on live play, since their initial releases didn't do much for the ability to save and edit creations. But both were toys.
And so is DJBox.
To me, it looks like a fun distraction for a while. I've always been envious of DJs, but I don't have the time or the money to invest in becoming good at it. So if I can spend $40 and be able to 'play DJ', then that's sufficient for me. Later on, I can go and listen to somebody who has some *real* talent and who knows what they're doing.
It isn't as though DDR has driven me to try out for Stomp.
Back in the Quake and Quake 2 days, it was never a question of "What do we want to play next?" No, you just played Quake for hours on end and had a blast. Was that just the age of FPS innocence or something?
Watch out for that warranty. My in-laws recently tried to get warranty service on their GE refrigerator.
It was going to cost $100 for the service call and $70 an hour for the technician to check it out, even if the problem was covered by the warranty. They were also informed that nobody could look at it for about 17 days. That's a long time to be without a refrigerator/freezer.
Considering the fact that the tech probably wouldn't be in a hurry, would be motivated to find issues that wouldn't be covered, and would be looking to sell them parts and labor above the minimum, the in-laws decided to just buy a new refrigerator.
But not a GE model.
Do me a favor.
Install Steam on a gaming capable machine. Then, install a Steam CS LAN dedicated server on another machine.
Now, log into your Steam account on the gaming machine and connect to the LAN dedicated server. If both machines happen to have Internet access while having internal IPs (10.x.x.x, 192.168.x.x), you can't play on your own server.
How's that for a problem?
Personally, I'd rather just buy this as a client side app that could then just parse the logs and show the activity using the timestamps for pacing.
Somebody over at the DDRFreak forums had even mentioned that they created a stepfile generator.
And to make the AC a double-dumbass, Fox last night ran two episodes of the Simpsons followed by two episodes of Malcolm. So his statement that the original poster was wrong... is wrong.
Why would you want any of the Construction/Destruction sets if there's no ability to save your creations?
Your $500 investment is typically outdated in 2 to 3 years, requiring another $500 investment if your motherboard won't support the latest and greatest hardware to play the latest and greatest games.
By comparison, there are still games being published for my ancient gray PSX. My initial investment there has gone a long, long way.
And in all that time, my PSX has never required maintenance, security patches, driver installs, OS upgrades (that had to be installed by me, anyway), or hardware upgrades. I've never had to troubleshoot a flaky power supply, and I've certainly never had to adjust graphics settings on the games to make them playable.
Now, granted, I have a bunch of other consoles, through which I am 'upgrading' my capabilities, but each one cost about the same price as a mid-level graphics card and have been just as reliable as that old PSX.
So yes, you can game on a cheap computer or you can game on a cheap console. But be prepared to put at least $300 of your time into keeping that PC operable. How long do you spend tweaking graphics settings when you pop in that new game? Whatever the amount, it's a lot more than when you pop a game into a console.
I game on both platforms, but when I want a quick game, I go straight for the console. Fast boot time, no login, I press 'On' and the game is there.
When I want a game with the latest graphics or vastly more multiplayer options, I go with the PC.