And get this, if I'm right then eventually MTV and every radio station in the country will have to start relying on local bands and fans to tell THEM what is worth playing, instead of being paid to play what gets on the air, by the record companies. Imagine that! It almost sounds like capitalism compared to the current system.
there is your proof that P2P is hurting the industry.
Personally, I don't care if it is anymore. If someone can tell me what is unfair or uncapitalistic about a band making all of it's money through live concerts, and distributing cheap mp3's or CD's for little to no money at all.......a situation that doesn't involve any middle men (record companies) and relies solely on word of mouth to bring the cream of the crop into the public scene (seems to have worked for websites so far).......if someone can show me what is wrong with all that, then I might consider caring about the record industry. The truth is simply that they're standing in the way of progress and technology. A tactic that hasn't worked to well in the past.
...manufacturing, but can anyone tell me why they can't just make the things (CPU) bigger? If they increased the size of the actual little, nearly microscopic components that must be inside, maybe it wouldn't be such an issue. Like I said, I don't know squat about how they are made, but when I look at them I think, 'of course their hot as hell, it's all packed into this little silver square for christ's sake!
For the most part the TV networks are the movie studios. In fact, out of all of them I can only think of one that isn't wetting it's beak in both TV and Movies. That would be General Electric. But it does have ties. It owns Bravo, and holds a few interests with FOX, which is obviously big on movies.
Other than GE, though? Viacom is Paramount, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, VH1, TNN, CMT, Comedy Central, Showtime, The Movie Channel, and more. Most TV holdings have Film Industry counterparts. Nickelodeon and MTV for instance, both make movies of their own. Vivendi Univeral is Universal Pictures, 50% USA Networks, Showtime's Australia counterpart, and partial ownership of HBO Asia. Sony is Columbia Pictures, Tri-star Pictures, Cinemax in Latin America, E! in Latin America, HBO in Brasil, Cinemax in Asia, and (partially) HBO in Asia, among others. News Corp is FOX, their TV/movie interests should be obvious. Disney's movie interests are obvious, in the TV world they are ABC, ESPN, A&E, The History Channel, Lifetime, and E!, along with many foreign counterparts of those same stations. And of course there's AOL Time Warner, who's reach is pretty damn wide, and widely damn obvious, in movies and TV.
"we were asleep at the switch when there was this digital Pearl Harbor."
Not a Battlefield 1942 fan, eh?
But seriously folks, what does a guy have to do to get a Pearl Harbor map in this game? Screw political correctness, it's a game. Screw political correctness right in it's ass.
...it was widely reported not more than a month ago that the initial strike on a supposed leadership bunker was actually a strike on nothing. CBS reporters stood in the hole, in the dirt. The bunker never existed, and there wasn't even the slightest hint of debris from a building being hit. If you then take into account the reports after that strike that agents were on the ground, and had seen someone resembling Saddam being taken out on a stretcher from the building........maybe you should learn to be more skeptical in cases where the Government is the sole source of the news and information you shape your opinions on.
I hope you're trolling, quoting that idiot Rummy. Hussein still releases messages, and was in control of an entire country recently, you might have heard. However, the WMDs haven't made a show of it since way before even the first Gulf War.
You're the only person (anywhere, not just here) that I've seen link to the actual Green Party website, and not this one. Is there a reason for that? The confusion has been bothering me since the 2000 election, when the linked site released a party platform that included things like '100% income tax on all income over 10 times the minimum wage'. The site would have to be the most dedicated hoax in history if it weren't at least representing some other green party, but during the election the site thanked Nader on the front page, and their platform spread to every news program from CNN's live talkshow to Good Morning America, where Nader said, after being asked about the segment I mentioned, that the platform was released by a "dissident group." In my opinion, it did a lot of damage to the buildup that had been going on around his campaign. I had planned not to vote for him until Michael Moore himself responded to an email I sent asking how he could endorse a platform like that (this was before the GMA interview) and set the record straight.
Anyway, I don't suppose you have any other information?
Anyone remember a TF map made buy a guy named Sgt.....something or other. It had all 4 teams, spawn in a hall of their own. Imagine a map that from above would be shaped like a plus sign. Each team starts from one end out of the four, and the line is their 'hall' leading to the middle. The object is to get the ball in the middle and take it to a goalpoint (the middle was actually on a lower level, the halls end in a drop-off with up/down air currents for moving in and out of the hall, and a 'door' that opens and closes at the start of a game or round, or when the team is elimated.) The catch is that each enemy hall has a goalpoint at the very end, so to get their takes a lot of teamwork (you run through a gauntlet of enemies that can immediately respawn when you kill them). The actual goalpoint is a hole in the center of a circular indentation in the wall, and I have so many gaming memories of the last fight, struggling to get the ball up that incline to the goal, or stop another team from accomplishing that same goal. Part of the real fun was that your team could pick an enemy team to target for elimination, and after 3 scores on their goal they would be transported to a long hall that encircles the central area, with all of their weapons taken away (except the trusty axe) and made to either watch the game unfold, or axe their fellow prisoners to death (assuming a second team had been eliminated). Games on maps like that, and TF in general (including Mega TF, with all the whacky, copyright infringing sound effects) were, for me anyway, really above and beyond any gaming experience I can remember.
If anyone has more info on the name of the map, or just more junk to share, please do.
When I see some hardcore FPS gamer have a visit to the hospital, and watch a real human life disappear before their eyes, then come out smiling, I'll believe video games might, over the long term, desensitize children.
Whether or not you give Wal-Mart your business is your, uhhhh....business. But just FYI, they win the fight for low prices because they lead the pack in foreign sweat shops, among other things.
What would be a funny solution is legislation stating that once a copyrighted work has been distributed without authorization a certain number of times, or it is estimated that over half of the instances where a copyrighted work is used are unauthorized, that work becomes part of the public domain.
Now that would be power to the people........maybe. Anyway, everyone loves a good challenge, right?
...tell me how to get my 55 year old mother to care and this might matter to me.
Ebay is so mainstream, I really doubt they'll see much backlash at all with their policies. Most people simply don't think it will effect them, and don't care if it effects others.
The failure of this game is almost tragic in my opinion, because there are moments that are just fantastic, and would've made it an instant hit had the game not been so unpolished. The first of these of course, is encountering an Agent. And they do it in an early, shock-value fashion. The Agent smashes through a door you're opening (this is in slow motion of course) and you're not even sure what's happening because you're falling backwards and can't see the door.........well, as my character falls onto his back and out of the way, the image of that man in the black suit and sunglasses at the door comes into view, and I freak out a just a tad, trying to regain control and fight. Unfortunately for me, the game is true to the fact that fighting an Agent is hopeless unless you can blow him up from a distance or something. But trying sure is fun. You can last a while fighting the inevitable, getting in some good hits if you're good, and the hand-to-hand fighting is so cool that it truely does sadden me that the game is such a failure in other ways.
The fact that the AI drives so badly that car missions can be impossible without cheating, absolutely ruined the recreation of the highway scene. Seeing Morpheus actually on that moving truck, fighting an Agent while we drove alongside them, would've made me giggle like a schoolgirl had I not been busy bouncing off the wall and flipping periodically. By that mission, I had gotten used to the other glitches. I also had no muzzle flash on my gun, textures that seemed to 'grab' onto others, get stuck, and stretch around, and civilian cars passing through ours like ghosts.
Anyway, I could go on listing memorable moments........so I will. Taking the hacking thing far enough that I got a simulated chat with Trinity (ok, so the chat was just me answering yes or no questions), a call from Morpheus saying I should be careful calling certain numbers.....and I think the guy who played Ted in Bill&Ted praised my r33t $k1lls.
Kung-fu fighting Trinity. She sucked. And she wasn't a very good fighter either. I'm sorry I couldn't help myself.
Being chased by the Smith family.
Others I can't remember.
Still, I can't emphasize enough that this does not make the game worth $50. I'm mostly focusing on spoilers because people have heard the bad side, and probably won't get to experience the few plusses there are.
As much of a generalization as this might be, (hell it might even be borderline bigotry) I really think the problem is that 50% of this country is in the south. I'm reluctant to be so simplistic in my judgement, but I only need talk to my relatives in Kentucky, or visit the barber shop here in North Carolina to see people just gushing about our beloved aristocrat. You should've heard the way they were wow'ed by him landing on an aircraft carrier, 'Oooh! I even heard he flew at the controls for half the trip!' 'Wow!'
To me it's like everyone is insane. No one sees him as putting PR above the reality of a bloody war, and no one seems to notice that every word that comes out of his mouth wreaks of insincerity. And it's not like I'm trying to play favorites, I hate democrats and republicans equally! They're all phonies! The real republicans are the Libertarians, and the real democrats are the Progressives. But Bush is the worst phony I've ever seen at the mic. You can find better acting in a low budget porno. Unfortunately, I think with voter apathy at an all time high (17% of the voting population was enough for Bush, or Gore, or whichever talking head supposedly got elected) he'll probably get re-elected. This time around he has the new neo-patriotic furvor backing him.
...first I should echo the performance issue. It's really the only thing keeping me from wanting to pay $10 a month to play. I run a 1.2GHz Athlon with an ATI Radeon 8500LE 128mb, and 256mb DDR. Not the greatest machine, but something that I feel should let me play newer games at around medium detail. That's just not the case with PS. I've tweaked it enough lately that I can stand to play in large battles, but there are just annoying little oddities, like a 1.5 second pause when opening a new door.....usually it's only loading a mid-sized room full of crates. What is the big pause for? I can't count how many times I've died assaulting a base as a result of this short pause. One of the major draws in PS (for me anyway) is that the combat can get large, and highly tactical. It is almost routine for squads to hold at a door and wait for the attackers, which is obviously bad for me.
Anyway, what I really wanted this post to focus on is how much better I think the game would be with a level system that reset players to level 0 after a given number of deaths. Maybe 3 or 10 or somewhere in between. And levels would come much faster, with certification terminals in all bases to allow quick upgrades after a level. This system would be much more fitting with planetside's fast paced FPS gameplay, IMO. As it is now, leveling is bathed in the stench of an MMORPG time-sink level system -- the visualization of which is actually more annoying than any MMORPG I've played. You gain exp to fill up one bar, but filling it up only fills in one block in a line of blocks that all have to be filled in before you actually GAIN a level (which gives you 1 certification point.....it take 2 to 'buy' any abilities). The only purpose of this not just being one line seems to be to show me that someone in the developement team thinks I am a moron.
Seriously, the point seems to be that coloring in the blocks will give me some kind of sense of accomplishment when leveling gets slower (as it, in true EQ-ish RPG style, does with every level). And someone is probably hoping that by the time the player gets to the point where leveling is so painfully slow that it feels like they're standing still, they'll be hooked.
But again Planetside's gameplay is so fun that it's not impossible to just ignore leveling and play, as I've done. It just takes away from the game, waiting days to get a new ability.
...this incredibly short, blanket criticism of millions of individuals the poster does not know will continue to be modded up, like similar posts that have no contributive value whatsoever, because the moderation system is inferior to, say, Kuro5hin.org's. Even the fact that no reason was given as to why they are dumb, or what they are ignorant of, was not viewed as a weakness by these moderators. Ieshan's interesting point way down below is apparently like so much kitty litter, in the eyes of the moderators, next to the godlike qualities of the above statement that people are dumb.
P.S. I would like to contribute and 'reform the system' as it were, but modding posts like this down as overrated for being to brief, or an obvious statement of 'good things are good, bad things are bad', is what got my moderating priviledges taken away for 6 months or so last time.
Maybe it's because it's 8 am and I haven't slept, or maybe it's just that when someone says something this ignorant it enrages me. I mean, it's intolerable that this statement even needs to be shot down. Read a book you stupid bitch.
Even the most complacent, oblivious, and trusting of Americans in this day and age, should be resigned to the fact that a conspiracy of good intentions can often lead to abuse of government power.
(thank you overzealous Slashdot filter, for making me lessen the effect of this quote by limiting the number of capital letters I can use. God knows seeing lots of capital letters on the screen in other peoples post, letters almost a full 1/3 taller than lower case letters, always ruins my day.)
Slashdot Mirror
And get this, if I'm right then eventually MTV and every radio station in the country will have to start relying on local bands and fans to tell THEM what is worth playing, instead of being paid to play what gets on the air, by the record companies. Imagine that! It almost sounds like capitalism compared to the current system.
there is your proof that P2P is hurting the industry.
Personally, I don't care if it is anymore. If someone can tell me what is unfair or uncapitalistic about a band making all of it's money through live concerts, and distributing cheap mp3's or CD's for little to no money at all.......a situation that doesn't involve any middle men (record companies) and relies solely on word of mouth to bring the cream of the crop into the public scene (seems to have worked for websites so far).......if someone can show me what is wrong with all that, then I might consider caring about the record industry. The truth is simply that they're standing in the way of progress and technology. A tactic that hasn't worked to well in the past.
...manufacturing, but can anyone tell me why they can't just make the things (CPU) bigger? If they increased the size of the actual little, nearly microscopic components that must be inside, maybe it wouldn't be such an issue. Like I said, I don't know squat about how they are made, but when I look at them I think, 'of course their hot as hell, it's all packed into this little silver square for christ's sake!
For the most part the TV networks are the movie studios. In fact, out of all of them I can only think of one that isn't wetting it's beak in both TV and Movies. That would be General Electric. But it does have ties. It owns Bravo, and holds a few interests with FOX, which is obviously big on movies.
Other than GE, though? Viacom is Paramount, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, VH1, TNN, CMT, Comedy Central, Showtime, The Movie Channel, and more. Most TV holdings have Film Industry counterparts. Nickelodeon and MTV for instance, both make movies of their own. Vivendi Univeral is Universal Pictures, 50% USA Networks, Showtime's Australia counterpart, and partial ownership of HBO Asia. Sony is Columbia Pictures, Tri-star Pictures, Cinemax in Latin America, E! in Latin America, HBO in Brasil, Cinemax in Asia, and (partially) HBO in Asia, among others. News Corp is FOX, their TV/movie interests should be obvious. Disney's movie interests are obvious, in the TV world they are ABC, ESPN, A&E, The History Channel, Lifetime, and E!, along with many foreign counterparts of those same stations. And of course there's AOL Time Warner, who's reach is pretty damn wide, and widely damn obvious, in movies and TV.
"we were asleep at the switch when there was this digital Pearl Harbor."
Not a Battlefield 1942 fan, eh?
But seriously folks, what does a guy have to do to get a Pearl Harbor map in this game? Screw political correctness, it's a game. Screw political correctness right in it's ass.
...it was widely reported not more than a month ago that the initial strike on a supposed leadership bunker was actually a strike on nothing. CBS reporters stood in the hole, in the dirt. The bunker never existed, and there wasn't even the slightest hint of debris from a building being hit. If you then take into account the reports after that strike that agents were on the ground, and had seen someone resembling Saddam being taken out on a stretcher from the building........maybe you should learn to be more skeptical in cases where the Government is the sole source of the news and information you shape your opinions on.
I hope you're trolling, quoting that idiot Rummy. Hussein still releases messages, and was in control of an entire country recently, you might have heard. However, the WMDs haven't made a show of it since way before even the first Gulf War.
You're the only person (anywhere, not just here) that I've seen link to the actual Green Party website, and not this one. Is there a reason for that? The confusion has been bothering me since the 2000 election, when the linked site released a party platform that included things like '100% income tax on all income over 10 times the minimum wage'. The site would have to be the most dedicated hoax in history if it weren't at least representing some other green party, but during the election the site thanked Nader on the front page, and their platform spread to every news program from CNN's live talkshow to Good Morning America, where Nader said, after being asked about the segment I mentioned, that the platform was released by a "dissident group." In my opinion, it did a lot of damage to the buildup that had been going on around his campaign. I had planned not to vote for him until Michael Moore himself responded to an email I sent asking how he could endorse a platform like that (this was before the GMA interview) and set the record straight.
Anyway, I don't suppose you have any other information?
Anyone remember a TF map made buy a guy named Sgt.....something or other. It had all 4 teams, spawn in a hall of their own. Imagine a map that from above would be shaped like a plus sign. Each team starts from one end out of the four, and the line is their 'hall' leading to the middle. The object is to get the ball in the middle and take it to a goalpoint (the middle was actually on a lower level, the halls end in a drop-off with up/down air currents for moving in and out of the hall, and a 'door' that opens and closes at the start of a game or round, or when the team is elimated.) The catch is that each enemy hall has a goalpoint at the very end, so to get their takes a lot of teamwork (you run through a gauntlet of enemies that can immediately respawn when you kill them). The actual goalpoint is a hole in the center of a circular indentation in the wall, and I have so many gaming memories of the last fight, struggling to get the ball up that incline to the goal, or stop another team from accomplishing that same goal. Part of the real fun was that your team could pick an enemy team to target for elimination, and after 3 scores on their goal they would be transported to a long hall that encircles the central area, with all of their weapons taken away (except the trusty axe) and made to either watch the game unfold, or axe their fellow prisoners to death (assuming a second team had been eliminated). Games on maps like that, and TF in general (including Mega TF, with all the whacky, copyright infringing sound effects) were, for me anyway, really above and beyond any gaming experience I can remember.
If anyone has more info on the name of the map, or just more junk to share, please do.
When I see some hardcore FPS gamer have a visit to the hospital, and watch a real human life disappear before their eyes, then come out smiling, I'll believe video games might, over the long term, desensitize children.
Whether or not you give Wal-Mart your business is your, uhhhh....business. But just FYI, they win the fight for low prices because they lead the pack in foreign sweat shops, among other things.
What would be a funny solution is legislation stating that once a copyrighted work has been distributed without authorization a certain number of times, or it is estimated that over half of the instances where a copyrighted work is used are unauthorized, that work becomes part of the public domain.
Now that would be power to the people........maybe. Anyway, everyone loves a good challenge, right?
...tell me how to get my 55 year old mother to care and this might matter to me.
Ebay is so mainstream, I really doubt they'll see much backlash at all with their policies. Most people simply don't think it will effect them, and don't care if it effects others.
Again, I say: ***HUGE SPOILERS***
The failure of this game is almost tragic in my opinion, because there are moments that are just fantastic, and would've made it an instant hit had the game not been so unpolished. The first of these of course, is encountering an Agent. And they do it in an early, shock-value fashion. The Agent smashes through a door you're opening (this is in slow motion of course) and you're not even sure what's happening because you're falling backwards and can't see the door.........well, as my character falls onto his back and out of the way, the image of that man in the black suit and sunglasses at the door comes into view, and I freak out a just a tad, trying to regain control and fight. Unfortunately for me, the game is true to the fact that fighting an Agent is hopeless unless you can blow him up from a distance or something. But trying sure is fun. You can last a while fighting the inevitable, getting in some good hits if you're good, and the hand-to-hand fighting is so cool that it truely does sadden me that the game is such a failure in other ways.
The fact that the AI drives so badly that car missions can be impossible without cheating, absolutely ruined the recreation of the highway scene. Seeing Morpheus actually on that moving truck, fighting an Agent while we drove alongside them, would've made me giggle like a schoolgirl had I not been busy bouncing off the wall and flipping periodically. By that mission, I had gotten used to the other glitches. I also had no muzzle flash on my gun, textures that seemed to 'grab' onto others, get stuck, and stretch around, and civilian cars passing through ours like ghosts.
Anyway, I could go on listing memorable moments........so I will. Taking the hacking thing far enough that I got a simulated chat with Trinity (ok, so the chat was just me answering yes or no questions), a call from Morpheus saying I should be careful calling certain numbers.....and I think the guy who played Ted in Bill&Ted praised my r33t $k1lls.
Kung-fu fighting Trinity. She sucked. And she wasn't a very good fighter either. I'm sorry I couldn't help myself.
Being chased by the Smith family.
Others I can't remember.
Still, I can't emphasize enough that this does not make the game worth $50. I'm mostly focusing on spoilers because people have heard the bad side, and probably won't get to experience the few plusses there are.
As much of a generalization as this might be, (hell it might even be borderline bigotry) I really think the problem is that 50% of this country is in the south. I'm reluctant to be so simplistic in my judgement, but I only need talk to my relatives in Kentucky, or visit the barber shop here in North Carolina to see people just gushing about our beloved aristocrat. You should've heard the way they were wow'ed by him landing on an aircraft carrier, 'Oooh! I even heard he flew at the controls for half the trip!' 'Wow!'
To me it's like everyone is insane. No one sees him as putting PR above the reality of a bloody war, and no one seems to notice that every word that comes out of his mouth wreaks of insincerity. And it's not like I'm trying to play favorites, I hate democrats and republicans equally! They're all phonies! The real republicans are the Libertarians, and the real democrats are the Progressives. But Bush is the worst phony I've ever seen at the mic. You can find better acting in a low budget porno. Unfortunately, I think with voter apathy at an all time high (17% of the voting population was enough for Bush, or Gore, or whichever talking head supposedly got elected) he'll probably get re-elected. This time around he has the new neo-patriotic furvor backing him.
...first I should echo the performance issue. It's really the only thing keeping me from wanting to pay $10 a month to play. I run a 1.2GHz Athlon with an ATI Radeon 8500LE 128mb, and 256mb DDR. Not the greatest machine, but something that I feel should let me play newer games at around medium detail. That's just not the case with PS. I've tweaked it enough lately that I can stand to play in large battles, but there are just annoying little oddities, like a 1.5 second pause when opening a new door.....usually it's only loading a mid-sized room full of crates. What is the big pause for? I can't count how many times I've died assaulting a base as a result of this short pause. One of the major draws in PS (for me anyway) is that the combat can get large, and highly tactical. It is almost routine for squads to hold at a door and wait for the attackers, which is obviously bad for me.
Anyway, what I really wanted this post to focus on is how much better I think the game would be with a level system that reset players to level 0 after a given number of deaths. Maybe 3 or 10 or somewhere in between. And levels would come much faster, with certification terminals in all bases to allow quick upgrades after a level. This system would be much more fitting with planetside's fast paced FPS gameplay, IMO. As it is now, leveling is bathed in the stench of an MMORPG time-sink level system -- the visualization of which is actually more annoying than any MMORPG I've played. You gain exp to fill up one bar, but filling it up only fills in one block in a line of blocks that all have to be filled in before you actually GAIN a level (which gives you 1 certification point.....it take 2 to 'buy' any abilities). The only purpose of this not just being one line seems to be to show me that someone in the developement team thinks I am a moron.
Seriously, the point seems to be that coloring in the blocks will give me some kind of sense of accomplishment when leveling gets slower (as it, in true EQ-ish RPG style, does with every level). And someone is probably hoping that by the time the player gets to the point where leveling is so painfully slow that it feels like they're standing still, they'll be hooked.
But again Planetside's gameplay is so fun that it's not impossible to just ignore leveling and play, as I've done. It just takes away from the game, waiting days to get a new ability.
I feel I've somehow been vindicated.
...this incredibly short, blanket criticism of millions of individuals the poster does not know will continue to be modded up, like similar posts that have no contributive value whatsoever, because the moderation system is inferior to, say, Kuro5hin.org's. Even the fact that no reason was given as to why they are dumb, or what they are ignorant of, was not viewed as a weakness by these moderators. Ieshan's interesting point way down below is apparently like so much kitty litter, in the eyes of the moderators, next to the godlike qualities of the above statement that people are dumb.
P.S. I would like to contribute and 'reform the system' as it were, but modding posts like this down as overrated for being to brief, or an obvious statement of 'good things are good, bad things are bad', is what got my moderating priviledges taken away for 6 months or so last time.
Go here and sign up at the bottom of the page.
My link lists companies, and clicking the company name lists what they own (including television and radio stations).
...they did a bang-up job of ensuring ready access to that fairly essential evidence.
Not really. Compare the numbers if you want.
Fox's stake in New York also makes it a pretty big influence. That's my take at least.
And no I'm not a particularly huge fan. Though I would be if they took a more investigative role.
Maybe it's because it's 8 am and I haven't slept, or maybe it's just that when someone says something this ignorant it enrages me. I mean, it's intolerable that this statement even needs to be shot down. Read a book you stupid bitch.
Even the most complacent, oblivious, and trusting of Americans in this day and age, should be resigned to the fact that a conspiracy of good intentions can often lead to abuse of government power.
"HUMANS ARE SUPERIOOORRR!!" - John Crichton
(thank you overzealous Slashdot filter, for making me lessen the effect of this quote by limiting the number of capital letters I can use. God knows seeing lots of capital letters on the screen in other peoples post, letters almost a full 1/3 taller than lower case letters, always ruins my day.)