Thinking about it a bit more, there's different types of nerds. It's hard for me to imagine the theater folk and band geeks being 30 year old virgins. At the same time, there's also the engineering geek, who may well fit that stereotype. My hunch is that the standard deviation in virginity age is merely greater for those who have a higher IQ, and those 40 year old virgins skew the numbers;)
See if there's a board games meetup group in your area (meetup.com). I live in Houston TX and there's a fairly good amount of activities to be had on a weekly basis (played Robo something-or-other and a very similar game to Puerto Rico (you build a communal castle and other players can use your buildings with their workers -- but this gives you a small amount of production as well) last Sunday -- very fun).
If you're ever in the area, I also do an occasional casual board games night at my apt with some friends.
Thank you for you insightful commentary. You made a new connection for me between the interactivity of many modern new art pieces and video games -- and I think you're spot on.
I'm reminded of a quote from Jacques Derrida (I can't find it exactly right now so I'll paraphrase): You cannot understand new art. If you could understand it, it wouldn't be new.
I think Ebert doesn't fundementally doesn't understand gaming as a medium. Rather than pointing to RPGs where interactivity is second to story, I think a game like Peace Maker qualifies as art in the fullest sense of the word. Why? The interface isn't great -- but one could argue the greatest painters didn't have the greatest technical skill. What makes it art is through interactivity, one discovers the pecularities and develops an understanding of the parties and people involved. There are limits, but even books have a set number of pages. By playing the above game, I gained new insights into the people involved, every bit as much as a novel. Central I think, unlike JRPGs, the gameplay is central to one's understanding -- not some add-on to gain levels.
(Author's note: Don't flame me. I love FF, Xenogears, and Fallout, but in all except the last, the ability systems (the "RPG" gameplay) is fundamentally separated from the story, which is largely static.)
You think Pong's old? I play chess. Now that's 0ld sk00l for you!
Seriously, with tons of amazing board/card types of games, why are video gamers content to hijack the words "game" and "gaming" to pertain only to their genre outside of any reasonable context? Or am I the only one who enjoys both Counter-Strike and Settlers of Catan?
There's a UI design spec that calls for all buttons to be named as verbs. Sound silly? Your word buttons become:
Continue with Save? Save Cancel
Or your other example:
Convert this document to plain text?
If you convert this document, you will lose all text styles (such as fonts and colors) and document properties.
Don't Convert Convert
A little wordier, but even in the muddiness of the the bad verbage, the choices are at least clear. Apple is notorious for following this simple little dictum, whereas no one at MS has any idea about usability.
Of course; but it's those assumptions of basic moral rules and values that are the problem! Where should we get them from? How should we settle debates when different groups have different sets of assumptions? Where's the common ground on which to have those discussions if we can't agree that our assumptions must stem from reason (a situation I've asserted is impossible)?
Unless there's some branch of logic I'm aware of, there is always a set of axioms from which reasoning proceeds -- including the rules of reasoning themselves. Euclid's geometry founds itself on 7 postulates. What I don't understand is why one doesn't simply come up with an ethical axiom (or set thereof) and then proceed logically from that point. If one were to set up an ethical "axis mundi" as it were, one could then proceed. There's hardly anyone who disputes Calculus based on the non-acceptance of our numerical system. Why not establish an ethical system based on a unprovable but universally agreed upon premise?
If I wanted to plant this axiom, I would simply say "suffering should be avoided" -- whatever suffering means to the person is fine. One could establish a utilitarian system based on that approach or one could justify Kant's categorical imperative -- these would require additional premises.
Can't you be kinder than that? You could either use eccentric genius if you wished to be especially kind, but I'd prefer genius afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia, since he believes in a worldwide Jewish conspiracy and that the Russians cheat at chess to beat him.
Then we really shouldn't have driven Alan Turing into suicide.
I really regret all those homophobic actions I took over 20 years before I was born. In a related story, under 60 "news" personalities are still proud of fighting in World War II (see statements like "when we saved you in WWII...")
I always love playing against Ghandi (at least in Civ4) because if I'm nice to him, I always have a useful ally the whole game. He won't randomly declare war on you despite 1000s of years of peace like say, Julius, Catherine, or the worst, Alexander.
The word "choose" is still valid in a deterministic context since there's still the issue of a society being "forced" to do things when its immediate survival is in jeopardy. (The American Indians were "forced" off of their native lands.)
The interesting part to me is there seems to be a bit of Heisenberg in the whole thing; if I were told that I were deterministically predetermined to sit in a certain chair, I would probably sit in a different one just to spite you; some use this as a defense of the vagueness of fortune tellers.
So if you want to go down that route then the perception of "choice" and everything that goes with it (right, wrong, credit, responsibility, etc) is nothing more than an evolutionary quirk.
You could describe the shape of my finger, a baby's smile, the beauty of a forest, all as "evolutionary quirks" if one wanted to; if ethics is a product of evolution why does it make it useless or trivial?
If the brain is deterministic then don't concepts of right and wrong go out the window?
Let us assume the brain is deterministic, but that it has no way of knowing whether it is. However, society chooses to believe that it is. Based on the belief that it is non-deterministic, will it not make different decisions? In other words, if people believe they can control their actions, I think they're more likely to take "right" actions, regardless of how much control "they" actually have. In other words, "right" and "wrong" are purely pragmatic concepts which are used to promote a "better" society (i.e. utilitarian) in this conception.
When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. By commanding diverse technology, you're able to develop solutions to best suit the customer rather than just doing what you did everywhere else. If you want to make an analogy to the medical field, while there are specialists for feet, brain surgery, etc, at the end of the day, you call a doctor for your initial diagnosis, not a neurosurgeon.
Another thing you can do that no one else can is a nuts-to-bolts solution from the bottom up from a problem -- you can manage a solution from the get-go rather than being "the oracle guy". Large consulting companies like IBM do solutions that are sometimes agnostic w.r.t. implementation.
Lastly, you're an independent worker -- you can find solutions where none exist! This is terrific for many positions.
Some ideas of places where you'd be good: I work for a large software company who does road shows regularly. There's an IT guy who goes to set up our servers/clients/etc who needs to know how all of it works -- he can't call the database guy to help him. Freelance IT Professional -- there's quite a few places (car dealerships, small businesses, etc) which need IT infrastructure but can't pay for a full-time IT guy. Just ask around, you'll be surprised at how many places need help (and how well it pays) and you're one of the few people who could do it (warning: requires people-skills). Last idea: larger consulting company like IBM. IBM builds call centers and stuff all over the place and needs people who can implement solutions as well as think them up to work in existing IT environments.
You sound like a very qualified employee who I'd rather hire than the "oracle guy", since I bet you can learn oracle whereas other IT guys get stuck in specialization ruts.
One of the tests of fair use is if the offending use of said work is non-commercial. While the videos themselves are available for free, they contained advertisements to the teacher's pay site: they could be construed as advertising for it. Thus, the work could be construed as being "for profit" and thus not falling under fair use.
I'm not saying I necessarily agree with this interpretation, but I do think it's a good idea to give both sides of the story.
Why wouldn't we want skilled, educated, hard-working, people from other countries to come here and become citizens? Doesn't that improve the value of our republic? They pay taxes, do honest work, raise families...how are they any different from our Grandfathers, Great Grandmothers, or even farther back who came to the US looking for a better life? Do we have more a right to happiness than they, just because they weren't born here?
However, foreign workers who intend to go back and send the majority of their money back with them contribute much less to the American economy, since they are less likely to spend their wages in the US.
As a US worker, we already have several advantages over the foreign competition (language fluency, cultural understanding, better education (generally)); why do we need to further tilt the scales further in our favor?
I'm not disputing the fact that Massachusetts pilgrims were zealots; merely your use of the word "first" rather than "one of the first"; too many people believe the US was founded by such people, when in reality, they were just one of many groups.
Lets look at US history for just a brief moment. Who came here first? Oh thats right the uber puritans.
Last I checked the pilgrims landed on Plymouth rock in 1620. Jamestown was founded in 1607, 13 years earlier. If anything, the US was founded on the basis of good old fashion mercantilism and attempting to make a profit by growing tobacco. The other flaw I'd see in the argument is that were heritage the cause, you'd expect Massachusetts to be ground zero for the religious right; nothing could really be further from the truth.
I think the real cause is isolation. Religious conservatism is much more at home in smaller, more insular towns, where "big city ideas" threaten their "way of life". One of these "big city ideas" was the idea of the sexual revolution in the 60's; while the ideas spread quickly among large cities of cosmopolitan populations (that's where it started after all), such ideas are slower to spread to smaller more homogeneous populations where there's active resistance to cultural change.
From TFA: The long-awaited sequel runs on an evolved version of the Oblivion engine, although Bethesda says it's reworked the third-person view because of negative feedback from its last role-player.
I'm hoping it's 3rd person. If it weren't the elder scrolls team making the game, I'd be more in favor of it. 3rd person is part of what gives Fallout its flavor. Having gone back and played the Fallout 2, I'm amazed at how little time I spend walk around compared to a game like Oblivion, and I think part of that is the perspective. My only other hope is they don't keep the auto-level "feature" from oblivion.
Other than that, I don't really care. I agree that it's important to allow them room to innovate rather than trying to pigeon-hole features I need.
Whenever he'd do an experiment, Mr. Wizard was always calm and almost solemn, but you could tell from his smile he always loved what he was doing. He wouldn't explain things with loud sound effects, macromedia flash type diagrams, and didn't need to have 20 different camera angles to show an experiment. The whole thing had a feeling of sincerity and earnest while newer shows just feel like lots of showmanship without much science (I'm looking at you Bill Nye!) He reminded me a lot of the late Mr. Rogers too. I don't know what shows kids can even watch on TV today that don't involve puppets, screaming animals, or just total over stimulation; Mr Wizard was just one person calmly but happily explaining something they're extremely interested in and wants to teach others. The fact he didn't need to over-act or try to dress it up I think shows authenticity as much as anything else.
In the future, when new versions and extensions of OpenGL are released, we won't have any guarantee that they will properly update the drivers.
NVidia has been releasing binary Linux drivers for over 5 years. There's been new versions of OpenGL, new extensions, the new NVSG, bugs, and all this time NVidia has done a good job releasing drivers that are up-to-date with their Windows counterparts and stable (can you say the same for ATI?) In my 8+ years using Linux, I have never had a problem with an NVidia driver (except one where I submitted a bug report and it got fixed). The hypothetical scenario you mention has, to my knowledge, not yet happened even though there was a much better business case for having poor Linux support years ago than today.
Nowadays, the choice is clear: go Intel X3000/X3500, which supports open source and you can be sure will always be up-to-date
By up-to-date you mean...using a video card that performs worse than 3-year old NVidia hardware? People have different priorities. For me, if I buy a 3D card, I want performance (for 2D, there's no argument since NV's 2D driver is open source and outperforms intel). I don't want to buy something that's already out of date.
The license grid gives you absolutely no reason to specialize.
I beg to differ. While you could make everyone the same, it definitely paid to specialize. There were several "physical attack damage increased" grids near at far ends of the license board. For my fighters, I made it a priority to go after those, while for my mages, I cared more about getting the "magic damage+" and "mana cost reduction" gambits, which were also near one another. I had two offensive mages, one of whom specialized in status ailments and wielded a bow while the other was a straight attack mage. With headhunter, channeling, and putting her on last priority to case healing magic, she was able to do large amounts of damage and maintain most of her MP. Later in the game, I gave her shades of black, which allowed her to cast spells for no mp (but allowed her to regain mp via headhunter). Also, the item bonuses stack so it pays to create on character who uses items. With all the "ether++" and "remedy++" spaces on the board, I'd put my "item user" in the party whenever someone needed mp or had 10 status ailments.
If you decided (as you did), just to get all the low-level stuff with everyone, you really miss out on some of the higher level (farther away from the center) gambits which are insanely useful.
As a caveat, at the end of the game I ended up having a few hundred LP left over with everyone and could probably just learn the whole board with everyone. Square should have made a few 1000 LP squares to provide for even further specialization and more end-game content.
I agree that the game didn't make as good use of summons as it could've.
Why the hell do they limit which gambits you have access to, and make you buy them all?
So you can't cast Fire3 on the first boss? So you don't make everyone a mage since it's cheaper? Not the greatest decision, granted, but there's reasons.
What I don't understand is the GP's hypocrisy in saying "Square never innovates" and saying "I didn't like FFXII because it was too different" at the same time. Either you really do want another clone or you want originality. If you don't like something that's original (like the ability system in FF8), at least have respect for the developers for thinking out of the box rather than simply playing it safe. Whenever you innovate, you're going to come out with some things some people really like and some people really don't. I much prefer this to a game everyone thinks is mediocre.
When he breaks into your house, he has committed trespassing (and breaking and entering). In some states, that does entitle you to shoot. If you got into a fist-fight in a bar, and you pull a gun and shoot him, that's still murder (or any number of other cases).
We don't have any sympathy for the criminals down here....and don't even start on talking about their attitude towards them in TX
I live in Texas, but I have sympathy for anyone accused of a crime, because if accused, I would want sympathy from others. Some people believe Jesus Christ was executed for crimes he didn't commit. So really, it can happen to anyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Thinking about it a bit more, there's different types of nerds. It's hard for me to imagine the theater folk and band geeks being 30 year old virgins. At the same time, there's also the engineering geek, who may well fit that stereotype. My hunch is that the standard deviation in virginity age is merely greater for those who have a higher IQ, and those 40 year old virgins skew the numbers;)
See if there's a board games meetup group in your area (meetup.com). I live in Houston TX and there's a fairly good amount of activities to be had on a weekly basis (played Robo something-or-other and a very similar game to Puerto Rico (you build a communal castle and other players can use your buildings with their workers -- but this gives you a small amount of production as well) last Sunday -- very fun).
If you're ever in the area, I also do an occasional casual board games night at my apt with some friends.
Thank you for you insightful commentary. You made a new connection for me between the interactivity of many modern new art pieces and video games -- and I think you're spot on.
I'm reminded of a quote from Jacques Derrida (I can't find it exactly right now so I'll paraphrase): You cannot understand new art. If you could understand it, it wouldn't be new.
I think Ebert doesn't fundementally doesn't understand gaming as a medium. Rather than pointing to RPGs where interactivity is second to story, I think a game like Peace Maker qualifies as art in the fullest sense of the word. Why? The interface isn't great -- but one could argue the greatest painters didn't have the greatest technical skill. What makes it art is through interactivity, one discovers the pecularities and develops an understanding of the parties and people involved. There are limits, but even books have a set number of pages. By playing the above game, I gained new insights into the people involved, every bit as much as a novel. Central I think, unlike JRPGs, the gameplay is central to one's understanding -- not some add-on to gain levels.
(Author's note: Don't flame me. I love FF, Xenogears, and Fallout, but in all except the last, the ability systems (the "RPG" gameplay) is fundamentally separated from the story, which is largely static.)
You think Pong's old? I play chess. Now that's 0ld sk00l for you!
Seriously, with tons of amazing board/card types of games, why are video gamers content to hijack the words "game" and "gaming" to pertain only to their genre outside of any reasonable context? Or am I the only one who enjoys both Counter-Strike and Settlers of Catan?
There's a UI design spec that calls for all buttons to be named as verbs. Sound silly? Your word buttons become:
Continue with Save?
Save Cancel
Or your other example:
Convert this document to plain text?
If you convert this document, you will lose all text
styles (such as fonts and colors) and document
properties.
Don't Convert Convert
A little wordier, but even in the muddiness of the the bad verbage, the choices are at least clear. Apple is notorious for following this simple little dictum, whereas no one at MS has any idea about usability.
Don't forget the new Beautiful Katamari Damacy which is a 360 exclusive right now.
I think that'll be the game that does me in....
Of course; but it's those assumptions of basic moral rules and values that are the problem! Where should we get them from? How should we settle debates when different groups have different sets of assumptions? Where's the common ground on which to have those discussions if we can't agree that our assumptions must stem from reason (a situation I've asserted is impossible)?
Unless there's some branch of logic I'm aware of, there is always a set of axioms from which reasoning proceeds -- including the rules of reasoning themselves. Euclid's geometry founds itself on 7 postulates. What I don't understand is why one doesn't simply come up with an ethical axiom (or set thereof) and then proceed logically from that point. If one were to set up an ethical "axis mundi" as it were, one could then proceed. There's hardly anyone who disputes Calculus based on the non-acceptance of our numerical system. Why not establish an ethical system based on a unprovable but universally agreed upon premise?
If I wanted to plant this axiom, I would simply say "suffering should be avoided" -- whatever suffering means to the person is fine. One could establish a utilitarian system based on that approach or one could justify Kant's categorical imperative -- these would require additional premises.
Sue your customers! It's the best way to make money while building public trust!
I'm glad to see casinos are using a broad range of knowledge to act on this issues.
Seriously, if this gets around, casinos are going to lose money every day based on the people not going there out of fear.
Can't you be kinder than that? You could either use eccentric genius if you wished to be especially kind, but I'd prefer genius afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia, since he believes in a worldwide Jewish conspiracy and that the Russians cheat at chess to beat him.
Then we really shouldn't have driven Alan Turing into suicide.
I really regret all those homophobic actions I took over 20 years before I was born. In a related story, under 60 "news" personalities are still proud of fighting in World War II (see statements like "when we saved you in WWII...")
I always love playing against Ghandi (at least in Civ4) because if I'm nice to him, I always have a useful ally the whole game. He won't randomly declare war on you despite 1000s of years of peace like say, Julius, Catherine, or the worst, Alexander.
I think we don't actually disagree;)
The word "choose" is still valid in a deterministic context since there's still the issue of a society being "forced" to do things when its immediate survival is in jeopardy. (The American Indians were "forced" off of their native lands.)
The interesting part to me is there seems to be a bit of Heisenberg in the whole thing; if I were told that I were deterministically predetermined to sit in a certain chair, I would probably sit in a different one just to spite you; some use this as a defense of the vagueness of fortune tellers.
So if you want to go down that route then the perception of "choice" and everything that goes with it (right, wrong, credit, responsibility, etc) is nothing more than an evolutionary quirk.
You could describe the shape of my finger, a baby's smile, the beauty of a forest, all as "evolutionary quirks" if one wanted to; if ethics is a product of evolution why does it make it useless or trivial?
If the brain is deterministic then don't concepts of right and wrong go out the window?
Let us assume the brain is deterministic, but that it has no way of knowing whether it is. However, society chooses to believe that it is. Based on the belief that it is non-deterministic, will it not make different decisions? In other words, if people believe they can control their actions, I think they're more likely to take "right" actions, regardless of how much control "they" actually have. In other words, "right" and "wrong" are purely pragmatic concepts which are used to promote a "better" society (i.e. utilitarian) in this conception.
When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. By commanding diverse technology, you're able to develop solutions to best suit the customer rather than just doing what you did everywhere else. If you want to make an analogy to the medical field, while there are specialists for feet, brain surgery, etc, at the end of the day, you call a doctor for your initial diagnosis, not a neurosurgeon.
Another thing you can do that no one else can is a nuts-to-bolts solution from the bottom up from a problem -- you can manage a solution from the get-go rather than being "the oracle guy". Large consulting companies like IBM do solutions that are sometimes agnostic w.r.t. implementation.
Lastly, you're an independent worker -- you can find solutions where none exist! This is terrific for many positions.
Some ideas of places where you'd be good: I work for a large software company who does road shows regularly. There's an IT guy who goes to set up our servers/clients/etc who needs to know how all of it works -- he can't call the database guy to help him. Freelance IT Professional -- there's quite a few places (car dealerships, small businesses, etc) which need IT infrastructure but can't pay for a full-time IT guy. Just ask around, you'll be surprised at how many places need help (and how well it pays) and you're one of the few people who could do it (warning: requires people-skills). Last idea: larger consulting company like IBM. IBM builds call centers and stuff all over the place and needs people who can implement solutions as well as think them up to work in existing IT environments.
You sound like a very qualified employee who I'd rather hire than the "oracle guy", since I bet you can learn oracle whereas other IT guys get stuck in specialization ruts.
I listened to the NPR article at work today.
One of the tests of fair use is if the offending use of said work is non-commercial. While the videos themselves are available for free, they contained advertisements to the teacher's pay site: they could be construed as advertising for it. Thus, the work could be construed as being "for profit" and thus not falling under fair use.
I'm not saying I necessarily agree with this interpretation, but I do think it's a good idea to give both sides of the story.
Why wouldn't we want skilled, educated, hard-working, people from other countries to come here and become citizens? Doesn't that improve the value of our republic? They pay taxes, do honest work, raise families...how are they any different from our Grandfathers, Great Grandmothers, or even farther back who came to the US looking for a better life? Do we have more a right to happiness than they, just because they weren't born here?
However, foreign workers who intend to go back and send the majority of their money back with them contribute much less to the American economy, since they are less likely to spend their wages in the US.
As a US worker, we already have several advantages over the foreign competition (language fluency, cultural understanding, better education (generally)); why do we need to further tilt the scales further in our favor?
I'm not disputing the fact that Massachusetts pilgrims were zealots; merely your use of the word "first" rather than "one of the first"; too many people believe the US was founded by such people, when in reality, they were just one of many groups.
Lets look at US history for just a brief moment. Who came here first? Oh thats right the uber puritans.
Last I checked the pilgrims landed on Plymouth rock in 1620. Jamestown was founded in 1607, 13 years earlier. If anything, the US was founded on the basis of good old fashion mercantilism and attempting to make a profit by growing tobacco. The other flaw I'd see in the argument is that were heritage the cause, you'd expect Massachusetts to be ground zero for the religious right; nothing could really be further from the truth.
I think the real cause is isolation. Religious conservatism is much more at home in smaller, more insular towns, where "big city ideas" threaten their "way of life". One of these "big city ideas" was the idea of the sexual revolution in the 60's; while the ideas spread quickly among large cities of cosmopolitan populations (that's where it started after all), such ideas are slower to spread to smaller more homogeneous populations where there's active resistance to cultural change.
I think only the shooting is first person.
From TFA:
The long-awaited sequel runs on an evolved version of the Oblivion engine, although Bethesda says it's reworked the third-person view because of negative feedback from its last role-player.
I'm hoping it's 3rd person. If it weren't the elder scrolls team making the game, I'd be more in favor of it. 3rd person is part of what gives Fallout its flavor. Having gone back and played the Fallout 2, I'm amazed at how little time I spend walk around compared to a game like Oblivion, and I think part of that is the perspective. My only other hope is they don't keep the auto-level "feature" from oblivion.
Other than that, I don't really care. I agree that it's important to allow them room to innovate rather than trying to pigeon-hole features I need.
Whenever he'd do an experiment, Mr. Wizard was always calm and almost solemn, but you could tell from his smile he always loved what he was doing. He wouldn't explain things with loud sound effects, macromedia flash type diagrams, and didn't need to have 20 different camera angles to show an experiment. The whole thing had a feeling of sincerity and earnest while newer shows just feel like lots of showmanship without much science (I'm looking at you Bill Nye!) He reminded me a lot of the late Mr. Rogers too. I don't know what shows kids can even watch on TV today that don't involve puppets, screaming animals, or just total over stimulation; Mr Wizard was just one person calmly but happily explaining something they're extremely interested in and wants to teach others. The fact he didn't need to over-act or try to dress it up I think shows authenticity as much as anything else.
In the future, when new versions and extensions of OpenGL are released, we won't have any guarantee that they will properly update the drivers.
NVidia has been releasing binary Linux drivers for over 5 years. There's been new versions of OpenGL, new extensions, the new NVSG, bugs, and all this time NVidia has done a good job releasing drivers that are up-to-date with their Windows counterparts and stable (can you say the same for ATI?) In my 8+ years using Linux, I have never had a problem with an NVidia driver (except one where I submitted a bug report and it got fixed). The hypothetical scenario you mention has, to my knowledge, not yet happened even though there was a much better business case for having poor Linux support years ago than today.
Nowadays, the choice is clear: go Intel X3000/X3500, which supports open source and you can be sure will always be up-to-date
By up-to-date you mean...using a video card that performs worse than 3-year old NVidia hardware? People have different priorities. For me, if I buy a 3D card, I want performance (for 2D, there's no argument since NV's 2D driver is open source and outperforms intel). I don't want to buy something that's already out of date.
The license grid gives you absolutely no reason to specialize.
I beg to differ. While you could make everyone the same, it definitely paid to specialize. There were several "physical attack damage increased" grids near at far ends of the license board. For my fighters, I made it a priority to go after those, while for my mages, I cared more about getting the "magic damage+" and "mana cost reduction" gambits, which were also near one another. I had two offensive mages, one of whom specialized in status ailments and wielded a bow while the other was a straight attack mage. With headhunter, channeling, and putting her on last priority to case healing magic, she was able to do large amounts of damage and maintain most of her MP. Later in the game, I gave her shades of black, which allowed her to cast spells for no mp (but allowed her to regain mp via headhunter). Also, the item bonuses stack so it pays to create on character who uses items. With all the "ether++" and "remedy++" spaces on the board, I'd put my "item user" in the party whenever someone needed mp or had 10 status ailments.
If you decided (as you did), just to get all the low-level stuff with everyone, you really miss out on some of the higher level (farther away from the center) gambits which are insanely useful.
As a caveat, at the end of the game I ended up having a few hundred LP left over with everyone and could probably just learn the whole board with everyone. Square should have made a few 1000 LP squares to provide for even further specialization and more end-game content.
I agree that the game didn't make as good use of summons as it could've.
Why the hell do they limit which gambits you have access to, and make you buy them all?
So you can't cast Fire3 on the first boss? So you don't make everyone a mage since it's cheaper? Not the greatest decision, granted, but there's reasons.
I agree.
What I don't understand is the GP's hypocrisy in saying "Square never innovates" and saying "I didn't like FFXII because it was too different" at the same time. Either you really do want another clone or you want originality. If you don't like something that's original (like the ability system in FF8), at least have respect for the developers for thinking out of the box rather than simply playing it safe. Whenever you innovate, you're going to come out with some things some people really like and some people really don't. I much prefer this to a game everyone thinks is mediocre.
When he breaks into your house, he has committed trespassing (and breaking and entering). In some states, that does entitle you to shoot. If you got into a fist-fight in a bar, and you pull a gun and shoot him, that's still murder (or any number of other cases).
We don't have any sympathy for the criminals down here....and don't even start on talking about their attitude towards them in TX
I live in Texas, but I have sympathy for anyone accused of a crime, because if accused, I would want sympathy from others. Some people believe Jesus Christ was executed for crimes he didn't commit. So really, it can happen to anyone.