Finally, I have met another person besides me who likes the Chronicles.
I'd love to contact you sometime if you want to talk about them.
-Kasreyn
When did you decide to become an activist?
on
Ask Alan Cox, Activist
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
What specific issue (software patents / DMCA abuses / Linux issues / other) was the "straw that broke the camel's back", such that you decided to become so much more active politically?
...I feel no pity for the greedy fools who got taken by Priest. As this Craichy character mentioned, all they had to do was request independent testing and he'd have been found out for a sham. It was their own stupidity to fork over millions without requesting such testing or even doing background checks on the "inventor".
Anyone remember the saying, "if it seems too good to be true... IT IS"?
Apparently now every pissant little software corp is going to try to use the DMCA to flex its shrimpy muscles and feel manly by smacking around the Linux geeks, and the Linux geeks will see it as yet more evidence they're living some romantic battle against evil.
Here comes a wave of copycat DMCA fights. =P
Oh, I've also thought of the perfect anti-circumvention scheme! Every bit of software will have the following written as a comment at the head of the program: "Everything in this program is ours and you can't play with it. Doing so is circumvention". Voila, now companies can saddle the courts with controlling their crudware, what a lovely use of tax dollars.
"including Cinematography, Makeup, Music (Score), and Visual Effects. " At least they have 2 more chances for Best Picture or Best Director. They definitely deserved the ones they got."
...proving, I suppose, that the Academy aren't the ONLY nitwits with not a clue of what they're talking about. Shore's score may not have been the absolute *worst* licks-balls bad score of the year, but it was close.
The man can't compose his way out of a wet paper sack, but ignoramuses like you and the Academy hand him an Oscar just so LotR will get one more. Like to you it's some sort of weird math, "this movie deserves this many Oscars!" instead of "This ASPECT of this movie deserves AN Oscar", which if you were half the computer geek you claim to be, you'd realize, Taco.
Of course, you morons all have to stop for a moment and scratch your heads to remember that movies come with music. Apparently if it doesn't include screaming lyrics and electric guitars, people think it's not worthy of notice.
Frankly, Shore's score was the biggest disappointment in the entire movie (that and the presence of Liz "Can't Act" Tyler). Those who claim his score is good film music, don't know what good film music IS. Shore's Oscar was politics, plain and simple, and totally undeserved. Just like Horner didn't get an Oscar for Braveheart's score, which was hands-down the best film score of its year - politics. So quit yammering about "deserve". The Oscars are utter garbage and deserve to be ignored.
You CAN take that too far, you know. I agree, kids spending 24/7 on video games aren't building any memories, aren't learning a lot, aren't developing themselves as well as they could. But don't completely cut them out. They're just one variety of toy - and kids need toys, they need to play. Hell, adults do too. ^_^ Ask any educator, play is a very important part of education and mental (and social) development. Though the case can be made that computer games aren't teaching social development. =P
Give kids books and bikes and "Final Fantasy" and a Rubix Cube and Little League and Lego and a musical instrument and a foreign language or three and more books and movies and dodgeball and music and crayons, and turn 'em loose! The sky's the limit as long as they have sufficient opportunities to learn and grow. =)
Of course, I'm biased. My dad's a hacker, and rather than spending our time playing catch, we spent it tinkering with DOS. =P But the memories are nice, all the same, and I learned a lot. Computer games are also a way to get kids interested in computers, which in today's and the future economy will be helpful to them in their education and the job market. Just something to keep in mind.
D1 was great in its day. I lost thousands of hours to it. But D1 is a dead product, superceded by D2. If you liked the original, you will probably like D2 even better. It's the same basic game, but with far, far greater variety and replay value. Of course, if you didn't like D1, you may not like D2 either. To each his own.
You're wrong. D2 is a whole different kettle of fish. I have both, and you know what? I prefer D1. D2 is not an enhancement, it's a cheap knock-off of a game they did right the first time.
How many other companies are still provding free patches for five-year-old games?
All their recent patches do is remove functionality, change the networking of the other games to better suit D2, and screw with the balance for games that will never be balanced. Frankly, I could live without patches like that. I like the rules of a game to remain consistent over time as I play it, but that's not the case in SC and D2.
Yes, Blizzard has problems. If you look at their overall record, I think Blizzard is still one of the good guys. There don't seem to be many of them left. Give Blizzard a little slack, at least for a while longer.
Give me a break. I was giving Blizzard slack for years. I'm tired of it. If you'd been around Bnet as many years as I have, and seen the way they treat their oldest fans, you'd be disgusted with them too. I'm all out of patience and loyalty to Blizz.
You act like it's unreasonable for them to patch those bugs in D1? Those bugs ruin the game online. People don't even need trainers to ruin the play. Not only that, those bugs have been fixed in fan-written mods, yet Blizzard continues to say they can't do it. Won't is closer to the truth; I'm sure if they asked the modders for the patch code they'd just GIVE it to them for free, just to see the bugs finally fixed. And yet they've managed to release enough patches to bring Diablo to version 1.09, without ever finding time to even bother with it. You know what those patches did? They removed functionality from D1, and brought it in line with D2's new Bnet networking scheme.
I don't think what I ask is too much to ask from a company like Blizzard used to be. But they're not what they once were, and I for one have seen through it.
"Whatever you may think of Blizzard and the DMCA, at least it shows Blizzard is listening to its fans."
Oh? Which fans might that be?
I think I can speak on behalf of D1 players everywhere: over 5 years on the clock and still running. Where's the patch for the dupe bug, Blizz? Oh, what's that you say? There's NOT a patch for the most egregious bug in the game YET? After 5 YEARS? And don't even get me started on all the other bugs that would be easily fixed if they gave half a rat's ass.
The more you persecute racists and try to hide their speech, the faster they grow. They're like pasty white grubs, they always multiply under rocks. Outlawing their speech only makes them feel vindicated and martyred, makes them justify their paranoia and their belief that (insert racial/ethnic group) is out to get them.
The same thing happens with any other sort of evil, intolerance, and hate in the world. The more you try to ignore it, whistling past graveyards, the more it grows in silence and creeps into the hearts of people secretly. Communication is the way to get rid of ALL these hateful ideas and unite humanity in brotherhood, and the internet stands a good chance of doing so, if not for the interfering meddling of these idiot busybodies.
So let the racists say their piece, as LOUD as they can! That way we can just laugh them to scorn. That way we can talk to them, communicate with them, show them their error. But don't hide their ignorance; it will only worsen.
Of course, [/preachingtothechoir] and all. This is slashdot, after all. Anyone know of a comment board that the treaty writers read?...
-Kasreyn
P.S. I don't have much hope for preventing this, though. Anyone idiot enough to believe in a term like "hate crime" is probably incapable of grasping my argument in the first place.
I'm sure you're not reading down this far, but congrats Rob and Kathleen. Here's wishing you a long and happy life together. And I agree with an earlier poster, Rob - you BETTER post pics of the wedding.;-)
It has a lot of other issues involving religion, but much of the story is set in a post-apocalyptic world where knowledge and wisdom have been spurned, and man has engaged in a dark age of deliberate ignorance. In it, there are a few learned men, who like during the medieval Dark Age, escape persecution by becoming monks. These men hide and memorize the few remaining books, at great danger to their own lives, in the hopes that the descendants of the ignorant masses who loathe and fear knowledge may use that knowledge to make the world a better place. They bear a strong resemblance to Mr. Granger and the "hobos" at the end of Fahrenheit 451. Specifically Mr. Granger's quote: "There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man."
However, I'm not sure whether it will be truly appropriate for a high school class - besides the religious motifs, there is a lot of Latin and quite complex adult concepts, as well as the extremely pessimistic viewpoint it takes on mankind. The two books (Fahrenheit 451 and A Canticle for Leibowitz), by the end of each, both paint the same terribly sad and depressing view of mankind's nature, but there's a spark of hope - just a spark - left at the end. I heartily recommend it, and I hope your students get something out of both books.
This infuriates me. I'm an anime fan and was intending to get my hands on a regionless player eventually so I'd not be stuck with only US dubbed and subbed releases. I'm currently struggling financially and I can't afford luxury items like DVD's and players, though. So it looks like by the time I do get around to affording them, regionless players will be a thing of the past (I can imagine a conversation with a future child: "Daddy, what was 'Fair Use'?"). None of my friends or family have been able to find regionless players either - one of them got one that was advertised as regionless and it was in fact region 1. Where the hell do you find them??
I'm a huge CDex fan myself, and it has always performed beautifully on.wav's and.mp3's, but it crashes on me (page fault) every time I try to encode an.ogg. I've tried contacting the writer of CDex, but the contact email address listed on the site is no longer a valid address, so I can't contact him. I've also tried oggdrop, which simply refuses to work as far as I can tell (nothing happens).
So I guess I'm going to grab a copy of EAC and hope it can do better. I'm stuck with hardware that can't run Linux, so I'm trying to find anyone who's written a competent and functional ogg encoder for Win98. Apparently, CDex and Oggdrop are not.
Firstly, I agree with your take on licensing. Most licensed games that are good are simply good games, period, without the license. Tacking a franchise onto a mediocre game to improve sales always sounds like a good plan to marketroids, which is why they keep doing it, and making lousy franchise games. =P I don't know about anyone else's opinion, but I have YET to see a game under the Star Trek license, in ANY genre, that was worth a bucket of warm spit - and I have been watching new ST computer games for over 10 years. The number of decent Star Wars licensed games can be counted on the fingers of one hand, as well (and Rogue Squadron is one of them).
It's funny you bring up Wing Commander, which has become a franchise in and of itself (or did, before Origin folded for no visible reason). I still consider WC's 1, 3, and 4 to be unparalleled masterpieces of the space-dogfight genre of computer games. Then we get Wing Commander: Prophecy which, while a decent game, seems to rely mostly on eye candy and the "look! another WC game!" factor to achieve sales, not to mention a really lackluster plot with holes I could pilot a Fralthi through.;-) I suppose I'm glad the WC series ended before it could slip any further. =\
I agree with you that Farscape would make a lousy or at least merely a contrived shooter game. The series isn't about combat, so making a combat game from it is as silly as all the attempts to make a combat game out of Star Trek. For game adaptions of such shows, puzzle-solving or roleplaying/interaction adventure games seem the way to go. Why are we seeing an MMORPG in the Star Wars universe and not in the ST universe? Simple, in Star Wars you have an excuse to have violence and conflict everywhere so you can have characters killing enemies and "levelling up", in the ST universe the only conflict is at the borders of the various empires (Federation, Romulan, Klingon, Kzinti, Cardassian, Dominion, etc.). It would be ludicrous to start a new human character on Earth and walk out in the wilderness outside Starfleet HQ and find swarms of monsters to fight. =P But that's the only concept game designers seem capable of understanding these days.
And finally, about Quantum Leap, I agree wholeheartedly. =) That was one of the coolest TV shows ever made, and an adventure game with it would be awesome! I'm not sure whether the game would come with "episodes" which could be run in random or predetermined order, or whether there would be a string of episodes where choices Sam makes in one "life" affect the way things happen in another one. Changing history? Hints of Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder", anyone?;-) Some may say this was already done on consoles (Chrono Trigger), but I think Quantum Leap would be sufficiently unique to be worth the effort and the money.
And finally, I know how you feel about the "make your computer obsolete action". I've been computer gaming pretty much obsessively since '91, IIRC, and if the "more eye candy == better!!" school of thought were correct, you'd expect that I would have seen a steady, overall improvement in computer games from then until now, eh? Well, I haven't. Some of my favorite games to this day are games I played back in my early days, the Zork games, the original Wolfenstein, Dune 2, Civilization, etc. Of course, there have been good games more recently, but the quality depends on the dedication to making a great gaming experience, not on how pretty it looks or sounds. Few computer games companies seem to understand this concept any more; one that does is Spiderweb Software (no, I don't work for them, this plug is because I happen to like their games;-). They write games that are deliberately short on graphics and sounds, long on plot. Check it out! http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/
"...When I purchase my next television recording device, will I be able to chose to record my favorite show while I am away from home? Will I be able to record one show while watching another? Or will I be at the mercy of the network... only allowed to record should they *want* me to record..."
Here's Captain Obvious with Clues for the Clueful!
You're ALREADY at the mercy of the network. Who cares about what you can record? You only *watch*, in the first place, the programs they *want* you to watch. (insert Twilight Zone theme here). You seem to be operating under the misconception that TV viewers were ever offered any choice of any variety, which they were not. So please, lose the outraged squawking, it's just plain silly. Either watch TV and accept the crud they shovel at you, or DON'T WATCH TV. This is known, among adults, as a Decision.
What, you people think life is impossible on Jupiter? We don't know enough to say one way or the other. Who's to say Galileo's bacteria won't have some drastic effect on some Jovian life we are currently unaware of? Why contaminate Jupiter to save Europa from contamination? Why not just fling Galileo into the depths of space or into the sun if we want to get rid of it?
This smells to me of either not having been carefully thought through, or of unthinking assumptions that life must be impossible on Jupiter, when we simply don't know.
Asimov is officially credited with coining the term "robotics". I believe that's already in Oxford, though.
Robot, of course, was something he took from some old Russian SF writer, can't remember the name...
In addition to these, Asimov was a brilliant scientist and an amazing writer, and not merely of SF, but of all sorts of intriguing stuff. Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein together probably had as much influence on the course of SF as did the founders of SF, ie. Verne and Wells. ^_^
Apparently ever/. weenie sees this as a golden opportunity to crawl out from under their rock and scream about IE sucking. Here's a tip for you clueless wankers:
Tools | Internet Options
Security Tab. Click Custom Level. Select everything under "ActiveX" to "prompt" (or "disable").
Click Ok. Click Apply.
Enjoy your Shoshkele-less surfing.
Sheeeeesh.
-Kasreyn,
who is tired of/.ers knocking IE for being Evil without acknowledging its strengths.
P.S. Since Boston.com were so nice about carefully commenting what their HTML does, I should have my "Kill Shoshkeles" rule for the Proxomitron written in about 20 minutes.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally, I have met another person besides me who likes the Chronicles.
I'd love to contact you sometime if you want to talk about them.
-Kasreyn
What specific issue (software patents / DMCA abuses / Linux issues / other) was the "straw that broke the camel's back", such that you decided to become so much more active politically?
Thanks,
-Kasreyn
...I feel no pity for the greedy fools who got taken by Priest. As this Craichy character mentioned, all they had to do was request independent testing and he'd have been found out for a sham. It was their own stupidity to fork over millions without requesting such testing or even doing background checks on the "inventor".
Anyone remember the saying, "if it seems too good to be true... IT IS"?
-Kasreyn
Since when did corporations, legal fictions, enjoy equal protection under the first amendment?!
-Kasreyn
And THESE are the people Ellison expects us to trust with a national ID card program...?
-Kasreyn
I skipped out early this morning and went to see the first showing of Spiderman in my local theater. The Sam Raimi directed spiderman
Caps needed: *Spiderman*
is the first of the summers
*summer's*
blockbusters and stars Toby Maguire as the webslinger, Willem Dafoe as the Green Goblin and Kirsten Dunst and
*as*
the lovely Mary Jane. And guess what? Its
*It's*
one of the best comic book movies I've ever seen. I loved it. And I'll try not to lone-gunman
*gunmen*
-are-dead the review, but if you're super paranoid, just skip out, go see the flick, and enjoy it.
I find it sad that *I* have a "lameness filter" on what I can post, but Taco doesn't have a SPELLING filter.
-Kasreyn
"the lawyers say"? Lawyers? Since when do they know crap? I'm reminded of a Dilbert strip:
Idiot: So, tell me about our product.
Dilbert: Our product is beige. It uses electricity.
Idiot: Woah, brain overload!
I'm sure these lawyers had to have explained to them what a "bit" is so they could sound convincing, I guess.
-Kasreyn
Apparently now every pissant little software corp is going to try to use the DMCA to flex its shrimpy muscles and feel manly by smacking around the Linux geeks, and the Linux geeks will see it as yet more evidence they're living some romantic battle against evil.
Here comes a wave of copycat DMCA fights. =P
Oh, I've also thought of the perfect anti-circumvention scheme! Every bit of software will have the following written as a comment at the head of the program: "Everything in this program is ours and you can't play with it. Doing so is circumvention". Voila, now companies can saddle the courts with controlling their crudware, what a lovely use of tax dollars.
-Kasreyn
"including Cinematography, Makeup, Music (Score), and Visual Effects. " At least they have 2 more chances for Best Picture or Best Director. They definitely deserved the ones they got."
...proving, I suppose, that the Academy aren't the ONLY nitwits with not a clue of what they're talking about. Shore's score may not have been the absolute *worst* licks-balls bad score of the year, but it was close.
The man can't compose his way out of a wet paper sack, but ignoramuses like you and the Academy hand him an Oscar just so LotR will get one more. Like to you it's some sort of weird math, "this movie deserves this many Oscars!" instead of "This ASPECT of this movie deserves AN Oscar", which if you were half the computer geek you claim to be, you'd realize, Taco.
Of course, you morons all have to stop for a moment and scratch your heads to remember that movies come with music. Apparently if it doesn't include screaming lyrics and electric guitars, people think it's not worthy of notice.
Frankly, Shore's score was the biggest disappointment in the entire movie (that and the presence of Liz "Can't Act" Tyler). Those who claim his score is good film music, don't know what good film music IS. Shore's Oscar was politics, plain and simple, and totally undeserved. Just like Horner didn't get an Oscar for Braveheart's score, which was hands-down the best film score of its year - politics. So quit yammering about "deserve". The Oscars are utter garbage and deserve to be ignored.
-Kasreyn
You CAN take that too far, you know. I agree, kids spending 24/7 on video games aren't building any memories, aren't learning a lot, aren't developing themselves as well as they could. But don't completely cut them out. They're just one variety of toy - and kids need toys, they need to play. Hell, adults do too. ^_^ Ask any educator, play is a very important part of education and mental (and social) development. Though the case can be made that computer games aren't teaching social development. =P
Give kids books and bikes and "Final Fantasy" and a Rubix Cube and Little League and Lego and a musical instrument and a foreign language or three and more books and movies and dodgeball and music and crayons, and turn 'em loose! The sky's the limit as long as they have sufficient opportunities to learn and grow. =)
Of course, I'm biased. My dad's a hacker, and rather than spending our time playing catch, we spent it tinkering with DOS. =P But the memories are nice, all the same, and I learned a lot. Computer games are also a way to get kids interested in computers, which in today's and the future economy will be helpful to them in their education and the job market. Just something to keep in mind.
-Kasreyn
D1 was great in its day. I lost thousands of hours to it. But D1 is a dead product, superceded by D2. If you liked the original, you will probably like D2 even better. It's the same basic game, but with far, far greater variety and replay value. Of course, if you didn't like D1, you may not like D2 either. To each his own.
You're wrong. D2 is a whole different kettle of fish. I have both, and you know what? I prefer D1. D2 is not an enhancement, it's a cheap knock-off of a game they did right the first time.
How many other companies are still provding free patches for five-year-old games?
All their recent patches do is remove functionality, change the networking of the other games to better suit D2, and screw with the balance for games that will never be balanced. Frankly, I could live without patches like that. I like the rules of a game to remain consistent over time as I play it, but that's not the case in SC and D2.
Yes, Blizzard has problems. If you look at their overall record, I think Blizzard is still one of the good guys. There don't seem to be many of them left. Give Blizzard a little slack, at least for a while longer.
Give me a break. I was giving Blizzard slack for years. I'm tired of it. If you'd been around Bnet as many years as I have, and seen the way they treat their oldest fans, you'd be disgusted with them too. I'm all out of patience and loyalty to Blizz.
You act like it's unreasonable for them to patch those bugs in D1? Those bugs ruin the game online. People don't even need trainers to ruin the play. Not only that, those bugs have been fixed in fan-written mods, yet Blizzard continues to say they can't do it. Won't is closer to the truth; I'm sure if they asked the modders for the patch code they'd just GIVE it to them for free, just to see the bugs finally fixed. And yet they've managed to release enough patches to bring Diablo to version 1.09, without ever finding time to even bother with it. You know what those patches did? They removed functionality from D1, and brought it in line with D2's new Bnet networking scheme.
I don't think what I ask is too much to ask from a company like Blizzard used to be. But they're not what they once were, and I for one have seen through it.
-Kasreyn
"Whatever you may think of Blizzard and the DMCA, at least it shows Blizzard is listening to its fans."
Oh? Which fans might that be?
I think I can speak on behalf of D1 players everywhere: over 5 years on the clock and still running. Where's the patch for the dupe bug, Blizz? Oh, what's that you say? There's NOT a patch for the most egregious bug in the game YET? After 5 YEARS? And don't even get me started on all the other bugs that would be easily fixed if they gave half a rat's ass.
Hm. So much for the fans.
-Kasreyn
The more you persecute racists and try to hide their speech, the faster they grow. They're like pasty white grubs, they always multiply under rocks. Outlawing their speech only makes them feel vindicated and martyred, makes them justify their paranoia and their belief that (insert racial/ethnic group) is out to get them.
The same thing happens with any other sort of evil, intolerance, and hate in the world. The more you try to ignore it, whistling past graveyards, the more it grows in silence and creeps into the hearts of people secretly. Communication is the way to get rid of ALL these hateful ideas and unite humanity in brotherhood, and the internet stands a good chance of doing so, if not for the interfering meddling of these idiot busybodies.
So let the racists say their piece, as LOUD as they can! That way we can just laugh them to scorn. That way we can talk to them, communicate with them, show them their error. But don't hide their ignorance; it will only worsen.
Of course, [/preachingtothechoir] and all. This is slashdot, after all. Anyone know of a comment board that the treaty writers read?...
-Kasreyn
P.S. I don't have much hope for preventing this, though. Anyone idiot enough to believe in a term like "hate crime" is probably incapable of grasping my argument in the first place.
Tighening^H^H^H^H^Htening
=P
-Kasreyn
I'm sure you're not reading down this far, but congrats Rob and Kathleen. Here's wishing you a long and happy life together. And I agree with an earlier poster, Rob - you BETTER post pics of the wedding. ;-)
Again, congrats! That was so cool. ^_^
-Kasreyn
Walter M. Miller, Jr.: A Canticle for Leibowitz.
It has a lot of other issues involving religion, but much of the story is set in a post-apocalyptic world where knowledge and wisdom have been spurned, and man has engaged in a dark age of deliberate ignorance. In it, there are a few learned men, who like during the medieval Dark Age, escape persecution by becoming monks. These men hide and memorize the few remaining books, at great danger to their own lives, in the hopes that the descendants of the ignorant masses who loathe and fear knowledge may use that knowledge to make the world a better place. They bear a strong resemblance to Mr. Granger and the "hobos" at the end of Fahrenheit 451. Specifically Mr. Granger's quote: "There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man."
However, I'm not sure whether it will be truly appropriate for a high school class - besides the religious motifs, there is a lot of Latin and quite complex adult concepts, as well as the extremely pessimistic viewpoint it takes on mankind. The two books (Fahrenheit 451 and A Canticle for Leibowitz), by the end of each, both paint the same terribly sad and depressing view of mankind's nature, but there's a spark of hope - just a spark - left at the end. I heartily recommend it, and I hope your students get something out of both books.
-Kasreyn
This infuriates me. I'm an anime fan and was intending to get my hands on a regionless player eventually so I'd not be stuck with only US dubbed and subbed releases. I'm currently struggling financially and I can't afford luxury items like DVD's and players, though. So it looks like by the time I do get around to affording them, regionless players will be a thing of the past (I can imagine a conversation with a future child: "Daddy, what was 'Fair Use'?"). None of my friends or family have been able to find regionless players either - one of them got one that was advertised as regionless and it was in fact region 1. Where the hell do you find them??
-Kasreyn
I'm a huge CDex fan myself, and it has always performed beautifully on .wav's and .mp3's, but it crashes on me (page fault) every time I try to encode an .ogg. I've tried contacting the writer of CDex, but the contact email address listed on the site is no longer a valid address, so I can't contact him. I've also tried oggdrop, which simply refuses to work as far as I can tell (nothing happens).
So I guess I'm going to grab a copy of EAC and hope it can do better. I'm stuck with hardware that can't run Linux, so I'm trying to find anyone who's written a competent and functional ogg encoder for Win98. Apparently, CDex and Oggdrop are not.
-Kasreyn
Firstly, I agree with your take on licensing. Most licensed games that are good are simply good games, period, without the license. Tacking a franchise onto a mediocre game to improve sales always sounds like a good plan to marketroids, which is why they keep doing it, and making lousy franchise games. =P I don't know about anyone else's opinion, but I have YET to see a game under the Star Trek license, in ANY genre, that was worth a bucket of warm spit - and I have been watching new ST computer games for over 10 years. The number of decent Star Wars licensed games can be counted on the fingers of one hand, as well (and Rogue Squadron is one of them).
;-) I suppose I'm glad the WC series ended before it could slip any further. =\
;-) Some may say this was already done on consoles (Chrono Trigger), but I think Quantum Leap would be sufficiently unique to be worth the effort and the money.
;-). They write games that are deliberately short on graphics and sounds, long on plot. Check it out! http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/
It's funny you bring up Wing Commander, which has become a franchise in and of itself (or did, before Origin folded for no visible reason). I still consider WC's 1, 3, and 4 to be unparalleled masterpieces of the space-dogfight genre of computer games. Then we get Wing Commander: Prophecy which, while a decent game, seems to rely mostly on eye candy and the "look! another WC game!" factor to achieve sales, not to mention a really lackluster plot with holes I could pilot a Fralthi through.
I agree with you that Farscape would make a lousy or at least merely a contrived shooter game. The series isn't about combat, so making a combat game from it is as silly as all the attempts to make a combat game out of Star Trek. For game adaptions of such shows, puzzle-solving or roleplaying/interaction adventure games seem the way to go. Why are we seeing an MMORPG in the Star Wars universe and not in the ST universe? Simple, in Star Wars you have an excuse to have violence and conflict everywhere so you can have characters killing enemies and "levelling up", in the ST universe the only conflict is at the borders of the various empires (Federation, Romulan, Klingon, Kzinti, Cardassian, Dominion, etc.). It would be ludicrous to start a new human character on Earth and walk out in the wilderness outside Starfleet HQ and find swarms of monsters to fight. =P But that's the only concept game designers seem capable of understanding these days.
And finally, about Quantum Leap, I agree wholeheartedly. =) That was one of the coolest TV shows ever made, and an adventure game with it would be awesome! I'm not sure whether the game would come with "episodes" which could be run in random or predetermined order, or whether there would be a string of episodes where choices Sam makes in one "life" affect the way things happen in another one. Changing history? Hints of Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder", anyone?
And finally, I know how you feel about the "make your computer obsolete action". I've been computer gaming pretty much obsessively since '91, IIRC, and if the "more eye candy == better!!" school of thought were correct, you'd expect that I would have seen a steady, overall improvement in computer games from then until now, eh? Well, I haven't. Some of my favorite games to this day are games I played back in my early days, the Zork games, the original Wolfenstein, Dune 2, Civilization, etc. Of course, there have been good games more recently, but the quality depends on the dedication to making a great gaming experience, not on how pretty it looks or sounds. Few computer games companies seem to understand this concept any more; one that does is Spiderweb Software (no, I don't work for them, this plug is because I happen to like their games
Cheers,
Kasreyn
"...When I purchase my next television recording device, will I be able to chose to record my favorite show while I am away from home? Will I be able to record one show while watching another? Or will I be at the mercy of the network ... only allowed to record should they *want* me to record..."
Here's Captain Obvious with Clues for the Clueful!
You're ALREADY at the mercy of the network. Who cares about what you can record? You only *watch*, in the first place, the programs they *want* you to watch. (insert Twilight Zone theme here). You seem to be operating under the misconception that TV viewers were ever offered any choice of any variety, which they were not. So please, lose the outraged squawking, it's just plain silly. Either watch TV and accept the crud they shovel at you, or DON'T WATCH TV. This is known, among adults, as a Decision.
End clue session, exit's to your left...
-Kasreyn
What, you people think life is impossible on Jupiter? We don't know enough to say one way or the other. Who's to say Galileo's bacteria won't have some drastic effect on some Jovian life we are currently unaware of? Why contaminate Jupiter to save Europa from contamination? Why not just fling Galileo into the depths of space or into the sun if we want to get rid of it?
This smells to me of either not having been carefully thought through, or of unthinking assumptions that life must be impossible on Jupiter, when we simply don't know.
-Kasreyn
BWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!
(wipes away tear)
You really kill me, Rob. "About to", hehe!! ^_^
Ooh! Here's the next joke you should post as a story, to make me smile:
"US 'about to' sacrifice neccessary freedoms to catch 'terrorists'"
Or how about:
"Enron 'about to' go bankrupt."
Keep the silliness coming! ^_^
-Kasreyn
"phr1 writes "IBM has announced and Yahoo has noted that the first working implementation of Shor's factoring algorithm."
/grammarnazi]
[grammarnazi]
Apparently, phr1 does not need to use.
Complete sentences. =P
Either that or get rid of the "that".
[clicks jackboots,
-Kasreyn
Asimov is officially credited with coining the term "robotics". I believe that's already in Oxford, though.
Robot, of course, was something he took from some old Russian SF writer, can't remember the name...
In addition to these, Asimov was a brilliant scientist and an amazing writer, and not merely of SF, but of all sorts of intriguing stuff. Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein together probably had as much influence on the course of SF as did the founders of SF, ie. Verne and Wells. ^_^
-Kasreyn
Apparently ever /. weenie sees this as a golden opportunity to crawl out from under their rock and scream about IE sucking. Here's a tip for you clueless wankers:
/.ers knocking IE for being Evil without acknowledging its strengths.
Tools | Internet Options
Security Tab. Click Custom Level. Select everything under "ActiveX" to "prompt" (or "disable").
Click Ok. Click Apply.
Enjoy your Shoshkele-less surfing.
Sheeeeesh.
-Kasreyn,
who is tired of
P.S. Since Boston.com were so nice about carefully commenting what their HTML does, I should have my "Kill Shoshkeles" rule for the Proxomitron written in about 20 minutes.