Some great points, Lionel. I must confess that a good portion of my experience in this area comes from some individuals on the far side of what you'd think of as mainstream religion (i.e. Jehovah's Witnesses and Born Again [faith-healing, tongues-speaking] Pentecostals).
When you have people instead of just saying "Bless you" actually praying for you when you sneeze (in hopes of ridding you of the demons that cause your allergies), you have a different outlook on these things.
It provides some form of hope to people who feel otherwise helpless. It gives them the opportunity to feel that they can do something, anything to change what they feel needs to be changed.
The problem here is manyfold, but I'll focus on two. One, someone else already mentioned -- the energy spent praying could be better used doing something, anything that will actually work. There does exist a culture of superstitious believers who will pray and do nothing else.
But more importantly, to me, is that this has a long-term effect on society. When that person gets better, both he (and the person praying) may feel that this is by the grace of a higher power, and not due to whatever may have really happened. It's not harmless. I see this all the time, and not just with illness. "I was so depressed after I lost my job, but I prayed every night and God helped me find a new job. Praise be to the Lord, I can put food on my plate again."
No. God did not find you a job. You found a job because you were driven, you were qualified, and you tried hard.
We've got this huge culture of people who do not credit themselves fairly for their successes (or, you could argue, blame themselves fairly for their failures).
God did not help you quit drinking, stop gambling, or leave your husband who was beating you up. You did it yourself, and you deserve some credit.
Check out the "buzz" surrounding the 3.5E D&D turn-based RPG Temple of Elemental Evil (developed by Troika, published by Atari). The game shipped too early with many obvious bugs. Atari was supposed to release a demo within a week of the game coming out, but once there was a 10+ page thread on their official forums with descriptions of bugs, they kind of shelved that plan.
I guess it works both ways. In this case, better to let someone just hear about the bugs than to give them the chance to experience them firsthand for free and possibly ruin their desire for the game.
A college buddy introduced me to Settlers, then to Carcassone and Puerto Rico.
We've introduced probably 10 people to Carcassone (very low learning curve).
And it continues. You have someone over, say, "Want to play a board game?"
They expect Monolopy and out comes one of these great games that has a lot of the planning and strategy of a computer game but all the social interaction of a tabletop game. Of course they want to know where they can buy it (there's the rub!).
Once they realize there's a whole genre of these games, it's like you've introduced them to a new world.
I personally can't wait to see Tolkien's world totally trashed by hordes of power-leveling script kiddies, talking about pwning the Balrog and camping Orthanc.
I found this somewhat amusing, speaking of MMORPG + LOTR.
While it's not quite in the league of MMORPGs, there are numerous Persistent Worlds set up using the NWN engine. Some of these encourage/require active roleplay, usually through the presence of DMs who oversee everything, give NPCs life beyond scripted conversation, and reward roleplayers with experience or other in-game prestige.
The problem, of course, is finding a good PW and integrating yourself with the cliques and whatnot that have surely already formed there. Likewise, since these are usually run out of some guy's bedroom or dorm room on their home machine using an existing connection, you're probably not going to get the stability or scalability of a true MMORPG.
On the other hand, the personal touch can be quite nice. It's worth dabbling in, at the very least.
You can get even geekier and point out that 3E D&D is not "Advanced" D&D any more (even though it's 3E which would seem to come after 1E and 2E in the AD&D chain of releases). So if the original poster was claiming that THAC0 wasn't part of 1E or 3E D&D, he was probably right -- THAC0 was a part of AD&D.
(Sorry to assume gender up there, but sometimes it's just a safe bet:P )
If you're like me, and you know you're going to buy them anyway, pre-order the books from Amazon at a discount, instead of paying retail.
You can even do a little better if you buy all three books and then use the "share the love" feature to invite the rest of your gaming group to buy the books at 10% off the already reduced price.
(Not that I, er, still play D&D or anything.)
As much as I like to support the local game shops, some offers are too nice to pass up.
My buddies and I always theorized that the addicting nature of M:TG was caused by chemicals in the ink. I mean, you opened a new package of cards, and there was something about that smell. You had to have more of it.
Years later, it seems they've finally figured out how to hook people without the addicting chemicals (or, just maybe, we were pathetic geeks who spent way too much money playing a game... nah!).
(Seriously, I've stayed far away from this game... I spent enough money on it the first time around. I don't need to start spending money without even having the benefit of having 8 binders full of cards in my closet when I quit the hobby a second time!)
Psalm 137, verses 8 and 9. From the NIV: 8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us- 9 he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
In context, it's a little better than I remember it being. My recollection was that this was supposed to be the word of God, or at least the word of a prophet. Instead, the Psalmist is retelling a story of how the Jews' captors tormented them and asked them for songs of joy, and how they had no songs of joy, because they were in exile. Their only joy was in hoping that someone would someday avenge them... in a very brutal and terrible way.
I was brought up to believe, "All scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching," etc (2 Tim 3:16, give or take translation). So, it was easy for me as a young adult to read this and be horrified that the Psalmist was inspired by God to wish for the death of the Babylonian infants.
I maintain my belief that the vengeful God of the OT is no model for any kind of morality.
I would send you this privately but I don't have a way to do that. I don't know if you'll ever read it.
I admire your faith, I really do. I grew up in a Christian household, and broke away from the "flock" late in my teen years, as I was exposed to thoughts that made me doubt the moral consistency of the "truths" I had been taught from childhood.
I am not amoral, nor do I come from an atheistic background. I feel I have a strong moral compass which dictates how I live my life, and I do not believe any man can say with certainty that there is no god (or that there is one, and that's where we disagree!).
I admit, I took a bunch of things I personally found distasteful about the scriptures and threw them in there with tongue planted firmly in cheek. (I wouldn't call it trollish -- I wasn't looking to outrage any Christians, just get some laughs out of some fellow geeks... if I went to BibleStudy.com or something and posted it, that would be trolling... IMHO:) ) It was a cheap attempt at laughs and it got modded up just like the parent did, for similar reasons. I was surprised to check back in a couple days later and find a thoughtful response. Congratulations for making the effort, and I apologize for not responding sooner.
But, no matter how well you may be able to defend your faith, nothing you can tell me will change my mind that the points I outlined (and others that I'm too lazy to look up from work) show some serious breaches in the traditional morality derived from the scriptures.
As for your points, I will try and find the scripture I once had handy, where God says something like: "And may you find joy by smashing their infants against their walls"... perhaps I've mis-remembered it, and I'm sure I'm misquoting it. I'll try and find it for you, and if I do, I will reply to this message.
As for the Lot story, I had always heard that Lot was not aware his guests were Angels at the point where he offered his daughters to the mob -- that he was simply following the tradition of hospitality, that guests were placed above family. Either way, I agree that it's hard to judge the act from our own cultural standpoint. It was an easy target and I took it. No apologies.
You and I also have a different view on God/Satan/Job. The story sure sounds like "Egging him on" to me. "Look at my faithful servant...." Come now. It's asking for trouble. And why is Job more important than his family? Why is it okay for Satan to murder his children but not him? What is God accomplishing by giving Satan that limit? It always rubbed me the wrong way.
Same with Baldy. Even if they said "Your god is false and I hope you die, baldy" I think mauling all 42 of them was a bit of an overkill. It makes for a great story to scare the kids, but I think it makes a lousy foundation for a moral compass.
And you're right, I didn't pick on the New Testament. I was looking for laughs, and the OT has many more opportunities to pick fun than the NT.
I think SETI@Home has been successful at something many of these other events also achieved -- capturing the imagination of the populace.
I remember as a child, reading magazine articles about the moons of Jupiter, seeing an artist's conception of Jupiter rising behind a Volcano on Io, and being flabbergasted... awestruck.
Whether it was picturing running on the moon in the low gravity, or gazing out the window at Jupiter as a passenger spaceship did a loop around the gas giant on its way to an unknown destination, my imagination was completely dedicated to space travel.
Years later, I run SETI@Home for the same simple reasons. The thought of having some small part in what could arguably be the biggest discovery ever... that's something.
If SETI@Home never finds anything, it has still succeeded in giving me some measure of joy and excitement, that I'm doing my own small part.
A discover of a developed life form on another planet, however insignificant, would give undisputable proof of the ability of life to develop and adapt to the circumstances it finds.
As someone who grew up in a fundy Christian household, I can tell you it will have zero impact on most of those people.
Going from their Bible, literally, you'll see nowhere that says Earth was the only planet created, or imbued with life. In fact, I remember (in my youth) having conversations with people, and debating the possibility of what would have happened on other planets; if life had been created there, had they passed their Garden of Eden test, etc.
In fact, it made for a great little argument against UFOs -- imagine some other planet out there, that never fell from their garden of eden. They're still cool with God, chatting him up like Adam and Eve used to, and he says, "No, stay away from Earth. They're evil. We're working on fixing them up, give us a couple thousand years." "Oh, sure God, no prob."
You could go to Mars and come back with a green-furred 12-legged creature with purple antenna and it wouldn't shake the belief system of most of the fundies out there.
The monthly price is actually higher than the 10$ listed in the blurb. For a single month, you're paying nearly 15 bucks, though I believe you can knock it down to 12 bucks by paying a year at a time.
Varying rates plans apply depending on your subscription.
I've heard really mixed reviews of this... some folks say it's a lot of fun but not a traditional MMORPG, others feel like it's too much of a traditional MMORPG and not enough like Star Wars.
Personally, I'll play the "wait and see" game. With NWN SOU just being released, I have enough game content to fill up my spare time:)
It starts with an alert chime. It doesn't apply the tactile feedback (seatbelt+brake) unless you fail to respond and it feels a collision is still likely.
Honda has a whole page about this feature; check Google (or just read other posts in this thread, it's been linked twice already that I've seen).
I feel much safer knowing the control is in my hands, than an arbitrary machine anyway.
People have said the same thing about anti-lock brakes, traction control, power steering, and automatic transmissions over the years. And heck, some people do prefer to have control over everything.
This is an option; don't buy it if you're not the target market.
(Also note that the system is much more complicated than described in the MSNBC article; you don't think Honda would actually go to market with something that wouldn't let you get within 100m of another car, do you?)
But for those who do buy it, it will make driving safer. It provides a visual and audible warning when it thinks a collision is likely. If you don't respond, it provides a tactile warning (tighten seatbelt, tap brakes). That should be enough to jolt you out of your daydream (or cause you to look up from whatever you are doing which took your eyes off the road).
If it determines a collision is unavoidable, it does what it can to reduce impact on the passengers within -- tightens seatbelts and brakes with force. At this point, if the engineers at Honda have done their jobs, the car is going to crash, it's just trying to make it easier for you to survive the impact.
The system is somewhat more sophisticated than described in the MSNBC article.
According to this article on Honda's site, it factors in: the distance between the vehicles, the relative vehicle speeds, and the anticipated vehicle path to determine the likelihood of a collision.
It describes the setup a bit more: 1. Buzzer/light goes off 2. Seatbelt tightens a couple of times, brake is tapped 3. (System determines collision unavoidable) Seatbelt tightened drastically, brakes applied forcefully
I felt that TTT was cut more harshly than FOTR was... things didn't flow as smoothly, things were more jarring.
I'm hoping that some of that extra 43 minutes is invested into smoothing out some of those rough edges and making it flow just a little better.
But who am I kidding? I'll buy it anyway, and I'll buy the regular cut, and I'll buy both editions of ROTK, and if (when) they come out with some uber-box-set with all three movies, a copy of the books, a lifesize inflatable Balrog, and new commentary by Christopher Tolkien (heh, yeah right!) I'll buy that too.
At least they're telling us up front about the different editions, so buyers can make the right choices.
Let's just hope PJ doesn't release digitally altered (kindler, gentler) versions of the movies in twenty years:).
Since my early teen years, I was a caffeine junkie. Coffee and colas, nonstop. I used it both habitually (urg, morning, give coffee) and recreationally (yeah, drink 3 espressos and feel wacky, then stay up all night playing D&D) [yeah, yeah, nerd alert]. When Penguin Mints came out, I was buying them by the box via mail order, and eating a few every hour at work.
It got to be a bit much. Shakiness and being groggy in the morning until I dosed up were acceptable, almost "cool" within the right circles. But when I started having some stomach troubles (which apparently were unrelated) I decided on my own to give it up cold turkey.
I've been off it for a few years now, and I certainly sleep more now and feel more alive in the morning than I did when I was using it.
I still miss it every day, though.
I mostly miss the "recreational" aspect of it, though -- getting a good caffeine buzz to make the night last longer. But I know myself -- if I started drinking it "just on the weekends" or "just on game night" it wouldn't be long before I was back to my insane ways....
"What do you hope to gain from this? More directed ads? Didn't most of you people get a Tivo to skip the ads in the first place?"
How about a different question -- what do I fear to lose from this? Wow, they'll learn that 40% of the people in zip code 00000 that can afford a Tivo watch Survivor, or have season passes to Buffy. And I'm worried, why?
Optimizing for a given product is fine. Heck, I appreciate it! If I know that the company has spent time looking at specifically one game and has polished the driver for that game, that's one more data point I have on whether to buy it.
That's completely different from what happened here. They looked at a particular test where the camera travels on a set path and hard-coded it so that things were beautiful on that path. As soon as you hop the camera off the rails, the driver goes to crap.
Gah. Read the article. Or, if you're not up to that task, read the dozen posts before mine which say the same thing.
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Some great points, Lionel. I must confess that a good portion of my experience in this area comes from some individuals on the far side of what you'd think of as mainstream religion (i.e. Jehovah's Witnesses and Born Again [faith-healing, tongues-speaking] Pentecostals).
When you have people instead of just saying "Bless you" actually praying for you when you sneeze (in hopes of ridding you of the demons that cause your allergies), you have a different outlook on these things.
It provides some form of hope to people who feel otherwise helpless. It gives them the opportunity to feel that they can do something, anything to change what they feel needs to be changed.
The problem here is manyfold, but I'll focus on two. One, someone else already mentioned -- the energy spent praying could be better used doing something, anything that will actually work. There does exist a culture of superstitious believers who will pray and do nothing else.
But more importantly, to me, is that this has a long-term effect on society. When that person gets better, both he (and the person praying) may feel that this is by the grace of a higher power, and not due to whatever may have really happened. It's not harmless. I see this all the time, and not just with illness. "I was so depressed after I lost my job, but I prayed every night and God helped me find a new job. Praise be to the Lord, I can put food on my plate again."
No. God did not find you a job. You found a job because you were driven, you were qualified, and you tried hard.
We've got this huge culture of people who do not credit themselves fairly for their successes (or, you could argue, blame themselves fairly for their failures).
God did not help you quit drinking, stop gambling, or leave your husband who was beating you up. You did it yourself, and you deserve some credit.
Check out the "buzz" surrounding the 3.5E D&D turn-based RPG Temple of Elemental Evil (developed by Troika, published by Atari). The game shipped too early with many obvious bugs. Atari was supposed to release a demo within a week of the game coming out, but once there was a 10+ page thread on their official forums with descriptions of bugs, they kind of shelved that plan.
I guess it works both ways. In this case, better to let someone just hear about the bugs than to give them the chance to experience them firsthand for free and possibly ruin their desire for the game.
A college buddy introduced me to Settlers, then to Carcassone and Puerto Rico.
We've introduced probably 10 people to Carcassone (very low learning curve).
And it continues. You have someone over, say, "Want to play a board game?"
They expect Monolopy and out comes one of these great games that has a lot of the planning and strategy of a computer game but all the social interaction of a tabletop game. Of course they want to know where they can buy it (there's the rub!).
Once they realize there's a whole genre of these games, it's like you've introduced them to a new world.
I personally can't wait to see Tolkien's world totally trashed by hordes of power-leveling script kiddies, talking about pwning the Balrog and camping Orthanc.
....
I found this somewhat amusing, speaking of MMORPG + LOTR.
Funnier than this similar parody, at least.
Another one
(There's another one out there which is funnier, but I can't find it. My leet Google skills have failed me....)
Heheheh, haven't played too many "true" MMORPGs, have you? :-) :)
Good point. Maybe I should have added: "This may be a good thing"
While it's not quite in the league of MMORPGs, there are numerous Persistent Worlds set up using the NWN engine. Some of these encourage/require active roleplay, usually through the presence of DMs who oversee everything, give NPCs life beyond scripted conversation, and reward roleplayers with experience or other in-game prestige.
The problem, of course, is finding a good PW and integrating yourself with the cliques and whatnot that have surely already formed there. Likewise, since these are usually run out of some guy's bedroom or dorm room on their home machine using an existing connection, you're probably not going to get the stability or scalability of a true MMORPG.
On the other hand, the personal touch can be quite nice. It's worth dabbling in, at the very least.
Has anyone asked Bioware how they like their money hats?
(Ok, so it's not an X-Box exclusive, but it's still funny).
You can get even geekier and point out that 3E D&D is not "Advanced" D&D any more (even though it's 3E which would seem to come after 1E and 2E in the AD&D chain of releases). So if the original poster was claiming that THAC0 wasn't part of 1E or 3E D&D, he was probably right -- THAC0 was a part of AD&D.
:P )
(Sorry to assume gender up there, but sometimes it's just a safe bet
If you're like me, and you know you're going to buy them anyway, pre-order the books from Amazon at a discount, instead of paying retail.
You can even do a little better if you buy all three books and then use the "share the love" feature to invite the rest of your gaming group to buy the books at 10% off the already reduced price.
(Not that I, er, still play D&D or anything.)
As much as I like to support the local game shops, some offers are too nice to pass up.
My buddies and I always theorized that the addicting nature of M:TG was caused by chemicals in the ink. I mean, you opened a new package of cards, and there was something about that smell. You had to have more of it.
... nah!).
... I spent enough money on it the first time around. I don't need to start spending money without even having the benefit of having 8 binders full of cards in my closet when I quit the hobby a second time!)
Years later, it seems they've finally figured out how to hook people without the addicting chemicals (or, just maybe, we were pathetic geeks who spent way too much money playing a game
(Seriously, I've stayed far away from this game
I found the scripture I was looking for.
... in a very brutal and terrible way.
Psalm 137, verses 8 and 9. From the NIV:
8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us-
9 he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
In context, it's a little better than I remember it being. My recollection was that this was supposed to be the word of God, or at least the word of a prophet. Instead, the Psalmist is retelling a story of how the Jews' captors tormented them and asked them for songs of joy, and how they had no songs of joy, because they were in exile. Their only joy was in hoping that someone would someday avenge them
I was brought up to believe, "All scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching," etc (2 Tim 3:16, give or take translation). So, it was easy for me as a young adult to read this and be horrified that the Psalmist was inspired by God to wish for the death of the Babylonian infants.
I maintain my belief that the vengeful God of the OT is no model for any kind of morality.
Heya Tyreth --
... IMHO :) ) It was a cheap attempt at laughs and it got modded up just like the parent did, for similar reasons. I was surprised to check back in a couple days later and find a thoughtful response. Congratulations for making the effort, and I apologize for not responding sooner.
... perhaps I've mis-remembered it, and I'm sure I'm misquoting it. I'll try and find it for you, and if I do, I will reply to this message.
...." Come now. It's asking for trouble. And why is Job more important than his family? Why is it okay for Satan to murder his children but not him? What is God accomplishing by giving Satan that limit? It always rubbed me the wrong way.
I would send you this privately but I don't have a way to do that. I don't know if you'll ever read it.
I admire your faith, I really do. I grew up in a Christian household, and broke away from the "flock" late in my teen years, as I was exposed to thoughts that made me doubt the moral consistency of the "truths" I had been taught from childhood.
I am not amoral, nor do I come from an atheistic background. I feel I have a strong moral compass which dictates how I live my life, and I do not believe any man can say with certainty that there is no god (or that there is one, and that's where we disagree!).
I admit, I took a bunch of things I personally found distasteful about the scriptures and threw them in there with tongue planted firmly in cheek. (I wouldn't call it trollish -- I wasn't looking to outrage any Christians, just get some laughs out of some fellow geeks... if I went to BibleStudy.com or something and posted it, that would be trolling
But, no matter how well you may be able to defend your faith, nothing you can tell me will change my mind that the points I outlined (and others that I'm too lazy to look up from work) show some serious breaches in the traditional morality derived from the scriptures.
As for your points, I will try and find the scripture I once had handy, where God says something like: "And may you find joy by smashing their infants against their walls"
As for the Lot story, I had always heard that Lot was not aware his guests were Angels at the point where he offered his daughters to the mob -- that he was simply following the tradition of hospitality, that guests were placed above family. Either way, I agree that it's hard to judge the act from our own cultural standpoint. It was an easy target and I took it. No apologies.
You and I also have a different view on God/Satan/Job. The story sure sounds like "Egging him on" to me. "Look at my faithful servant
Same with Baldy. Even if they said "Your god is false and I hope you die, baldy" I think mauling all 42 of them was a bit of an overkill. It makes for a great story to scare the kids, but I think it makes a lousy foundation for a moral compass.
And you're right, I didn't pick on the New Testament. I was looking for laughs, and the OT has many more opportunities to pick fun than the NT.
I think SETI@Home has been successful at something many of these other events also achieved -- capturing the imagination of the populace.
... awestruck.
... that's something.
I remember as a child, reading magazine articles about the moons of Jupiter, seeing an artist's conception of Jupiter rising behind a Volcano on Io, and being flabbergasted
Whether it was picturing running on the moon in the low gravity, or gazing out the window at Jupiter as a passenger spaceship did a loop around the gas giant on its way to an unknown destination, my imagination was completely dedicated to space travel.
Years later, I run SETI@Home for the same simple reasons. The thought of having some small part in what could arguably be the biggest discovery ever
If SETI@Home never finds anything, it has still succeeded in giving me some measure of joy and excitement, that I'm doing my own small part.
Other great moments that they should let you reenact:
(Lot) Offering your virgin daughters to the mob for sexual abuse instead of offering some random visitors from out of town.
(God) Egging Satan into totally destroy Job, including killing all his children. He'll have more, don't worry.
(God) Telling your followers to smash the infant children of their enemies against the walls for fun.
(God) Killing every man, woman, and child at once in an effort to purify people, even though you know damn well it won't work.
(Elisha) Calling forth God's power to summon a pair of bears to tear to pieces 42 children who called you bald.
(David) Instead of merely sleeping with someone's wife, send her husband to the front lines so he dies and you can straight out marry her!
Oh, there's so many more; I just don't have the time to include them all. This game could be a blast.
I can't wait for the "Song of Solomon" expansion pack.
A discover of a developed life form on another planet, however insignificant, would give undisputable proof of the ability of life to develop and adapt to the circumstances it finds.
As someone who grew up in a fundy Christian household, I can tell you it will have zero impact on most of those people.
Going from their Bible, literally, you'll see nowhere that says Earth was the only planet created, or imbued with life. In fact, I remember (in my youth) having conversations with people, and debating the possibility of what would have happened on other planets; if life had been created there, had they passed their Garden of Eden test, etc.
In fact, it made for a great little argument against UFOs -- imagine some other planet out there, that never fell from their garden of eden. They're still cool with God, chatting him up like Adam and Eve used to, and he says, "No, stay away from Earth. They're evil. We're working on fixing them up, give us a couple thousand years." "Oh, sure God, no prob."
You could go to Mars and come back with a green-furred 12-legged creature with purple antenna and it wouldn't shake the belief system of most of the fundies out there.
The monthly price is actually higher than the 10$ listed in the blurb. For a single month, you're paying nearly 15 bucks, though I believe you can knock it down to 12 bucks by paying a year at a time.
... some folks say it's a lot of fun but not a traditional MMORPG, others feel like it's too much of a traditional MMORPG and not enough like Star Wars.
:)
Varying rates plans apply depending on your subscription.
I've heard really mixed reviews of this
Personally, I'll play the "wait and see" game. With NWN SOU just being released, I have enough game content to fill up my spare time
It starts with an alert chime. It doesn't apply the tactile feedback (seatbelt+brake) unless you fail to respond and it feels a collision is still likely.
Honda has a whole page about this feature; check Google (or just read other posts in this thread, it's been linked twice already that I've seen).
I feel much safer knowing the control is in my hands, than an arbitrary machine anyway.
People have said the same thing about anti-lock brakes, traction control, power steering, and automatic transmissions over the years. And heck, some people do prefer to have control over everything.
This is an option; don't buy it if you're not the target market.
(Also note that the system is much more complicated than described in the MSNBC article; you don't think Honda would actually go to market with something that wouldn't let you get within 100m of another car, do you?)
But for those who do buy it, it will make driving safer. It provides a visual and audible warning when it thinks a collision is likely. If you don't respond, it provides a tactile warning (tighten seatbelt, tap brakes). That should be enough to jolt you out of your daydream (or cause you to look up from whatever you are doing which took your eyes off the road).
If it determines a collision is unavoidable, it does what it can to reduce impact on the passengers within -- tightens seatbelts and brakes with force. At this point, if the engineers at Honda have done their jobs, the car is going to crash, it's just trying to make it easier for you to survive the impact.
The system is somewhat more sophisticated than described in the MSNBC article.
According to this article on Honda's site, it factors in:
the distance between the vehicles, the relative vehicle speeds, and the anticipated vehicle path to determine the likelihood of a collision.
It describes the setup a bit more:
1. Buzzer/light goes off
2. Seatbelt tightens a couple of times, brake is tapped
3. (System determines collision unavoidable) Seatbelt tightened drastically, brakes applied forcefully
I felt that TTT was cut more harshly than FOTR was ... things didn't flow as smoothly, things were more jarring.
:).
I'm hoping that some of that extra 43 minutes is invested into smoothing out some of those rough edges and making it flow just a little better.
But who am I kidding? I'll buy it anyway, and I'll buy the regular cut, and I'll buy both editions of ROTK, and if (when) they come out with some uber-box-set with all three movies, a copy of the books, a lifesize inflatable Balrog, and new commentary by Christopher Tolkien (heh, yeah right!) I'll buy that too.
At least they're telling us up front about the different editions, so buyers can make the right choices.
Let's just hope PJ doesn't release digitally altered (kindler, gentler) versions of the movies in twenty years
Since my early teen years, I was a caffeine junkie. Coffee and colas, nonstop. I used it both habitually (urg, morning, give coffee) and recreationally (yeah, drink 3 espressos and feel wacky, then stay up all night playing D&D) [yeah, yeah, nerd alert]. When Penguin Mints came out, I was buying them by the box via mail order, and eating a few every hour at work.
It got to be a bit much. Shakiness and being groggy in the morning until I dosed up were acceptable, almost "cool" within the right circles. But when I started having some stomach troubles (which apparently were unrelated) I decided on my own to give it up cold turkey.
I've been off it for a few years now, and I certainly sleep more now and feel more alive in the morning than I did when I was using it.
I still miss it every day, though.
I mostly miss the "recreational" aspect of it, though -- getting a good caffeine buzz to make the night last longer. But I know myself -- if I started drinking it "just on the weekends" or "just on game night" it wouldn't be long before I was back to my insane ways....
Now, where's my beer?
"What do you hope to gain from this? More directed ads? Didn't most of you people get a Tivo to skip the ads in the first place?"
How about a different question -- what do I fear to lose from this? Wow, they'll learn that 40% of the people in zip code 00000 that can afford a Tivo watch Survivor, or have season passes to Buffy. And I'm worried, why?
I mean, I've seen some cool nerf guns, but check this out (from the article):
... at about 530 miles per hour"
"Researchers shot a 1.67-pound chunk of foam from a gas cannon
Optimizing for a given product is fine. Heck, I appreciate it! If I know that the company has spent time looking at specifically one game and has polished the driver for that game, that's one more data point I have on whether to buy it.
That's completely different from what happened here. They looked at a particular test where the camera travels on a set path and hard-coded it so that things were beautiful on that path. As soon as you hop the camera off the rails, the driver goes to crap.
Gah. Read the article. Or, if you're not up to that task, read the dozen posts before mine which say the same thing.