And your complaint about big badguys respawning in a few minutes for someone else to kill...ever played a little game called WOW? That happens all the time, you can kill the Lich King as many times as you want. It's just the nature of the beast in MMOs. If enemies stayed dead, there would be nothing to do.
It is, indeed, the nature of the beast in MMOGs. And I am quite familiar with WoW - I've been playing it for years. Although lately WoW has started doing some more permanent stuff... You'll get a nice cinematic, or the world will genuinely change.
But that's not really my point...
I probably wasn't very clear, but I was simply contrasting what I perceive as BioWare's strength (good storylines) against the nature of the MMOG beast (can't make permanent changes, lots of repetition, lots of grinding).
What the real problem in these games trying to follow World of Warcraft is that they usually take aim at the previous generation of WOW. As in, Blizzard keeps moving WOW forward. The change the mechanics, the reinvent classes at times, they even change their world completely. They haven't stood still. Yet each time I see a new WOW killer come along it is aimed at WOW from three to four years ago claiming great new features which just btw, happen to be in the current WOW or are very similar.
The folks at Blizzard aren't stupid. They've been making games for a while now. They're aware that other folks are out there competing against them. They want to keep their WoW players in WoW. And they aren't afraid to change WoW to keep people playing.
WoW really is not the same product that was released years ago. Core gameplay mechanics have changed dramatically over the years.
If you see some (p)review talking about how GAME X has this awesome new feature that's absolutely wonderful and enjoyable and GAME X might just unseat WoW this time... You can rest assured that Blizzard will somehow incorporate that awesome new feature into WoW by the time GAME X launches.
Why is WoW still succesful? That is something worth pondering for the other MMO producers who want to be the next Blizzard. They do not have to beat WoW on the level of graphics or gameplay: WoW is already beaten there, by several other games. And they're still nr. 1. Because of one word: momentum.
I've got to disagree on this.
I don't play WoW because everybody else plays it... The only other person I'm concerned about is my wife, and the two of us have jumped from one game to another over the years. Played EQ together, DAoC, CoH, LotR:O, and WoW.
The reason we keep coming back to WoW is that the game keeps evolving. The game, very literally, is not the same thing that Blizzard released years ago. And I'm not even talking about the expansions.
Core game mechanics have changed over the years. Classes have evolved and changed. New zones have been introduced. New dungeons have become available. Talents have been tweaked and re-arranged dozens of times. Both factions have access to all the classes now. All sorts of new race/class combinations. All sorts of holidays and special events. And any mod that becomes a "must have" soon finds its functionality incorporated into WoW itself. And, again, I'm not even talking about the official expansions. Nor even the free rebuild that the 1-60 stuff saw with the release of Cataclysm.
When we get tired of playing WoW we can go do something else for a few months. And when we come back there'll be something new to interest us. A new dungeon, or a new zone, or some new quests, or enough changes to a class to make it feel new again, or whatever.
We've played plenty of other MMOGs over the years. And they haven't proved to be nearly as dynamic as WoW is. We'd get bored with them, go do something else for a while, come back... And find exactly the same game we'd gotten bored with. After a while, even if you've got other friends playing that game, you just stop coming back.
In fact, where I live, Blizzard seems to be promoting the expansion pack pretty aggressively, something I have never seen them do before.
There's generally a fairly substantial gap between WoW expansions. So it's entirely possible you've just forgotten the marketing blitz that surrounded previous expansions.
Maybe there's more advertising for this one... Maybe there's less... I have no idea how much they spent on advertising.
But I remember seeing plenty of advertising for Lich King and Burning Crusade.
One of the reasons Cataclysm is getting so much press is that there's a hell of a lot more going on than just the expansion. Blizzard completely re-built the 1-60 experience. And everyone who plays WoW gets that update even if they don't buy the Cataclysm expansion. They've basically handed every WoW player a free expansion, in addition to the new paid expansion that's currently available.
I wasn't terribly interested when I first heard about this... And, while a lot of the teasers look very nice, I'm even less interested these days.
I like BioWare's games. I generally enjoy the Star Wars universe as well. I thoroughly enjoyed KotOR.
But BioWare's strength, in my opinion, is in their storytelling. And it's hard to develop much of a story in an MMOG.
The other problem is that the Star Wars universe doesn't lend itself all that well got an MMOG framework. As pointed out in the summary - Jedi will be the most popular class. But from a lore standpoint it really doesn't make much sense to have everyone running around as a Jedi.
The end result is a Star Wars setting where everybody is a Jedi. Everybody has a lightsaber and Force powers and everything else. And yet they're running around killing rats to grind up to the next level. And whatever big badguy you go defeat to save the universe just re-spawns in a few minutes for somebody else to kill.
Imagine if your ISP did this...people would be irate.
I think I'd actually prefer it to my "unlimited" plan right now.
Let us pay for a block of data... $X for 2 GB/month. $Y for 4 GB/month. Then provision your networks accordingly. No more of this bullshit where they oversell a segment and everybody gets crappy performance.
Or just charge per byte. Give me a handy tool to meter my use... And let me pay for what I use. Again - provision your networks accordingly and don't oversell the hell out of it.
Either way, I'd be a happier customer.
"Unlimited" sounds nice - but it doesn't exist. There are limits. And I'd rather know where the limits are than trip over them in the dark.
Another reason to stop eating meat? As if there were any reasons to stop eating meat?
Sure, yes, raise the stuff as humanely as possible... And maybe a CAFO isn't that. Stop filling it full of artificial hormones and extra antibiotics and feed it a diet more compatible with its biology... Sure. It'd probably taste better as well.
But stop eating meat? Why on Earth would anyone do that?
Maybe stop eating select types of meat, because you've got dietary restrictions of some sort. If you're tying to eat a low-fat diet or something...
But all meat? Entirely? About the only reason to cut out meat entirely is some kind of knee-jerk emotional reaction to the fact that cute little fluffy animals are getting turned into food.
The fact of the matter is that meat is very good for you. Lots of good vitamins, fats, and protein all in one tasty package. There's a reason that strict vegans/vegetarians wind up taking so many supplements.
Better solution - How about Akamai watches where the actual HTTP/FTP request comes from, rather than the DNS? That should get you closer to the client.
I'll start using my ISP's DNS servers as soon as they figure out how to properly configure/maintain/run them. Until then, OpenDNS and GoogleDNS it is.
I don't understand why Net Admins (such as yourself) block useful tools like Skype. Or streaming radio.
Well, we don't block Skype here... Though we do block streaming radio. I can give you a couple good reasons for both.
1) Bandwidth. A service like Skype or streaming some radio station may not actually take all that much bandwidth itself... But if you've got 10 or 100 or 1,000 folks using it simultaneously the bandwidth requirements get quite steep. And it's un-necessary bandwidth. You could pick up your phone and not hit the Internet, you could turn on a regular radio and not hit the Internet. Businesses don't like to pay for things they don't have to.
2) Security. Granted, streaming radio isn't horribly insecure... And maybe Skype plays fairly nice as well... But the last time I tried to set up some rules to allow Skype through a business's firewall I had to open a horrifyingly large number of ports. Generally speaking, you don't want to allow any more than you have to. And if you've got a working phone on your desk, then you don't have to use Skype, and I don't have to open those ports.
I see a lot of posts pointing out that Amazon is a privately-owned company and free to carry (or not carry) whatever books they like.
This is certainly true.
But this issue is more than just some random retailer deciding not to carry a book they don't like.
Amazon is removing these titles from Kindles. They carried a book, you bought it legally, you owned it, and now Amazon has gone and deleted it. Imagine if you bought a paper book at Barnes & Noble, and they decided to stop carrying it, so they sent somebody around to your house to collect that book and destroy it. This is troubling on a number of levels. It raises plenty of questions about ownership of digital property.
Amazon is also absolutely ginormous. They're one of the (if not the) largest on-line retailers. What they do affects more than just their own business and their own customers. Just like Wal-Mart refusing to carry AO video game titles has basically rendered them non-existant.
I'm not claiming that Amazon does not have the right to do what they did. Nor am I necessarily going to condemn it as a bad thing. But all the folks claiming it isn't a big deal because Amazon is well-within its rights are kind of missing the bigger picture.
But even if I classed everything that's done in SW as "magic" and not science, it's still a lot easier for me to set aside disbelief in that film than in either Tron film. Tron shows something I *know* doesn't and can't exist, rather than show something that in all probability doesn't exist. For me, it isn't science, it isn't magic, it isn't even fantasy. It's just a dumb idea and I can't suspend disbelief long enough to make it work for me.
That's my point though.
In Star Wars, the average viewer isn't as intimately acquainted with the physics that makes all that stuff patently ridiculous. So it's easy to gloss over it and imagine a world where it can all work.
In TRON, you're so familiar with how electronics and software actually work, that you're unable to imagine a world where they work differently.
And presenting such a world isn't seen as fantasy or magic, but as an insult to your intelligence.
It isn't that I don't have enough imagination, it's just that if you're going to show me a talking rock and call it science, you'd better give me a very good scientific explanation about where it got its mind and ability to talk, else it isn't really science fiction.
I'll agree with that...
And, while TRON is labeled/marketed as science fiction, I don't think that label applies. It could probably best be called science fantasy.
So, I disagree. Plausability is essential to good science fiction.
If we're talking about real science fiction... The kind of stuff that's genuinely based on real science... Then I'll agree with you.
Even Star Wars, which stretches the plausability quite a bit in parts, I can handle. I can think of potential ways light sabers might work that depend upon understanding of concepts we don't yet understand, and if you can do light sabers, anything else in the film is easy.
So... Magically sapient programs inside a computer are unbelievable...
But light that acts like a physical sword, and magical powers like telekinesis, and space ships that can magically travel faster than the speed of light... Those are all OK?
I'm sorry, but Star Wars isn't plausible at all. Star Wars definitely deserves to be filed under science fantasy.
If MobileMe or whatever it's called has tough us anything it's that Apples cloud stuff suck. If it's going to be expensive and locked in just for the sake of locking in I'm not going. Though I wouldn't buy the freaking Apple device to begin with..
I don't know that I'd call MobileMe expensive... It's only about $100/year. That's less than I'm paying for my WoW account.
And I don't know that I'd call it especially locked-in either. Granted, it's designed by Apple for Apple devices... But there's also a Windows install and a web client.
May I assume that a Google tablet cloud service would be free of charge?..
Well, it'd probably be free of charge... But it'll likely be supported by ads. Which plenty of people will object to. Especially since Google will be scraping your email for context to generate that advertising.
And it'll likely be just as "locked in" as MobileMe is.
The Open Source Initiative, founded by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond was founded in 1998, 12 years ago as of 2010. This is what the article refers to.
They may have coined the term, registered the domain, and made it all official...
But I was using open source software before 1998. And referring to it as "open source", too.
More specifically, my main issue with the OP's point is that the movie's anthropomorphization of the computer's inner workings is too obviously inaccurate
Of course it is. And it always was.
anyone who knows anything about computers can easily see that it's just a thin sheen of technobabble hastily thrown on top of a standard action movie.
And that's where things fall apart.
Back in the 80's when TRON first came out, nobody knew any better. Computers were mysterious and magical. It was believable (not accurate, but folks were willing to suspend their disbelief long enough to enjoy the movie).
These days everybody knows that the bits running through their machines are not anthropomorphic.
Worse, imagination seems to have gone out of style.
Props to the guy they got to do the UNIX commands in the real life scenes, but other than that, the tech stuff was so out of this world that it left none of what good sci-fi needs to engage the viewer -- that thin line of plausibility and the possibility that our world could really become like the one in the movie one day.
Sure, plausibility is good... But I wouldn't say that it's essential to good sci-fi. There's a lot of "good" sci-fi out there that isn't plausible at all.
I think the people that saw the original Tron at the time remember it as a much better movie than it really was.
Nah. I saw the original TRON at the time... And I own it, so I've watched it several times over the years. It isn't an amazing movie.
The plot is a little weird. The acting isn't amazing. The pacing is slow and awkward. The main reason to go see it was the special effects. It was the first movie I saw with computer generated effects. It was absolutely amazing at the time. And, while I still like it, the effects haven't aged that well.
While we all decry that sort of thing as laziness and lack of imagination these days, when we think back to that original movie we think of how cool it looked to us at the time, and gloss over the bad parts (like the plot and the pacing). The only imagination required to appreciate the new Tron is the imagination it takes to believe your nostalgic view of the original is an accurate measure of the quality of the film.
When TRON originally came out, computers were mysterious.
We'd just purchased some kind of EPSON machine for my mother, who was a teacher and used it for word processing. It has BASIC on it and ran some form of DOS. I spent hours upon hours just messing around with simple programs... Making it spam my name across the screen and things like that. It seemed like magic. And that computer was incredibly limited... There was a sense that if you could just crank these things to 11, you could do anything.
That's what TRON tied in to. The mystery and magic surrounding computers.
Folks were finally starting to see computers in the classroom and at home... And they seemed to be far beyond human comprehension. You had to learn obscure commands to make them do anything... And they'd do strange things that you didn't intend... But, if you knew what you were doing, you could make them dance.
Look at other movies of the time - Wargames and DARYL, for example. Folks really thought their home computers would be talking and thinking for themselves before too long. That human-like AI was just around the corner. Nobody knew any better.
And while nobody honestly believed that your programs were wandering around on the grid having conversations with each-other... It didn't seem quite so impossible.
These days that mystery and magic are just plain gone. And the idea that programs are fully sentient and having conversations with each-other inside your computer is simply ridiculous.
Disney tried to basically do the same thing with this movie, relying heavily on special effects.
Maybe I watch too much sci-fi crap to know what heavy special effects are... Maybe I've become desensitized... But the effects in TRON: Legacy didn't seem that heavy to me.
I mean, obviously, you've got the 3D thing going on... And it's taking place inside a computer, so much of the landscape is virtual... And everybody is glowing...
But, compared to something like Avatar? Or any of the Pixar stuff? Or even something like Sky Captain?
The effects in TRON: Legacy seem rather restrained and tasteful to me... Omnipresent, of course... Which can't be avoided, considering the setting... But restrained and tasteful none the less.
In the beginning scenes, they're careful not to show too much of the youthful Flynn. You get a lot of back-of-the-head and profile shots. There's dim light and plenty of shadows. You only get the one good look at his face, and he isn't talking or anything at that moment - just looking fondly at his kid. So they're obviously trying to hide the flaws of the digital process, and trying to make it look as realistic as possible. Maybe the technology isn't quite there... But it works pretty well in those early scenes.
Later, inside the machine, when you meet CLU... No, he isn't quite right. And I think that's the point. He isn't even just a regular program - he's a digital clone of Flynn. He's Flynn's idealism personified. He's some kind of attempt at forging an abstract thing into a concrete existence. I think he's supposed to look a little off, so we know that there's something wrong with him. (Which is also why he hasn't aged at all.)
This game is so great! But the gameplay on a PC is subpar... You should definitely buy the specialized hardware that we just so happen to be selling!
I don't see why you'd need specialized hardware.
There've been console to USB adapters for various controllers for years now if you really wanted to use an official controller. Or you could just use an Xbox360 controller, which work fine on computers. Or you could buy one of the many gamepads available for computers.
There's instructions on how to tie a necktie. I don't know how to tie a necktie. If I got a job at one of those banks I'd have to go dig up some instructions on-line... Or I could just use the nice document that HR provides during orientation. That'd actually be handy.
I don't know how one would get a job at a place like that without having worn a suit and tie to the interview. If they're telling people how to tie a necktie after the fact, isn't it too late?
So uh a business whose employees deal with customers on a daily basis in an industry where projecting an image of professionalism is very important has developed a guide to aid their employees? This just sounds like common sense to me.
Yup. Every business has a dress code. Some do uniforms... Some just tell you how you need to dress... Isn't that unusual.
43 pages sounds a bit insane
It does. And I assumed that it was all kinds of legalese...
until you actually look at it. Large print, lots of diagrams, lots of whitespace/formatting not 43 walls of text. It actually looks pretty clean and readable.
Not just clean and readable, but actually useful. There's instructions on how to tie a necktie. I don't know how to tie a necktie. If I got a job at one of those banks I'd have to go dig up some instructions on-line... Or I could just use the nice document that HR provides during orientation. That'd actually be handy.
Sadly, I'm sure that very few if any hardware vendor will change their behavior after this breach of security. Caveat emptor.
Probably not.
Your average home use is never going to see this information. And if they do get bitten by it, they'll never know why or how.
The folks who are seeing this information are unlikely to be using these devices with stock firmware. And even if they are, they've probably taken measures to secure their network in other ways.
Slashdot Mirror
And your complaint about big badguys respawning in a few minutes for someone else to kill...ever played a little game called WOW? That happens all the time, you can kill the Lich King as many times as you want. It's just the nature of the beast in MMOs. If enemies stayed dead, there would be nothing to do.
It is, indeed, the nature of the beast in MMOGs. And I am quite familiar with WoW - I've been playing it for years. Although lately WoW has started doing some more permanent stuff... You'll get a nice cinematic, or the world will genuinely change.
But that's not really my point...
I probably wasn't very clear, but I was simply contrasting what I perceive as BioWare's strength (good storylines) against the nature of the MMOG beast (can't make permanent changes, lots of repetition, lots of grinding).
What the real problem in these games trying to follow World of Warcraft is that they usually take aim at the previous generation of WOW. As in, Blizzard keeps moving WOW forward. The change the mechanics, the reinvent classes at times, they even change their world completely. They haven't stood still. Yet each time I see a new WOW killer come along it is aimed at WOW from three to four years ago claiming great new features which just btw, happen to be in the current WOW or are very similar.
The folks at Blizzard aren't stupid. They've been making games for a while now. They're aware that other folks are out there competing against them. They want to keep their WoW players in WoW. And they aren't afraid to change WoW to keep people playing.
WoW really is not the same product that was released years ago. Core gameplay mechanics have changed dramatically over the years.
If you see some (p)review talking about how GAME X has this awesome new feature that's absolutely wonderful and enjoyable and GAME X might just unseat WoW this time... You can rest assured that Blizzard will somehow incorporate that awesome new feature into WoW by the time GAME X launches.
Why is WoW still succesful? That is something worth pondering for the other MMO producers who want to be the next Blizzard. They do not have to beat WoW on the level of graphics or gameplay: WoW is already beaten there, by several other games. And they're still nr. 1. Because of one word: momentum.
I've got to disagree on this.
I don't play WoW because everybody else plays it... The only other person I'm concerned about is my wife, and the two of us have jumped from one game to another over the years. Played EQ together, DAoC, CoH, LotR:O, and WoW.
The reason we keep coming back to WoW is that the game keeps evolving. The game, very literally, is not the same thing that Blizzard released years ago. And I'm not even talking about the expansions.
Core game mechanics have changed over the years. Classes have evolved and changed. New zones have been introduced. New dungeons have become available. Talents have been tweaked and re-arranged dozens of times. Both factions have access to all the classes now. All sorts of new race/class combinations. All sorts of holidays and special events. And any mod that becomes a "must have" soon finds its functionality incorporated into WoW itself. And, again, I'm not even talking about the official expansions. Nor even the free rebuild that the 1-60 stuff saw with the release of Cataclysm.
When we get tired of playing WoW we can go do something else for a few months. And when we come back there'll be something new to interest us. A new dungeon, or a new zone, or some new quests, or enough changes to a class to make it feel new again, or whatever.
We've played plenty of other MMOGs over the years. And they haven't proved to be nearly as dynamic as WoW is. We'd get bored with them, go do something else for a while, come back... And find exactly the same game we'd gotten bored with. After a while, even if you've got other friends playing that game, you just stop coming back.
In fact, where I live, Blizzard seems to be promoting the expansion pack pretty aggressively, something I have never seen them do before.
There's generally a fairly substantial gap between WoW expansions. So it's entirely possible you've just forgotten the marketing blitz that surrounded previous expansions.
Maybe there's more advertising for this one... Maybe there's less... I have no idea how much they spent on advertising.
But I remember seeing plenty of advertising for Lich King and Burning Crusade.
One of the reasons Cataclysm is getting so much press is that there's a hell of a lot more going on than just the expansion. Blizzard completely re-built the 1-60 experience. And everyone who plays WoW gets that update even if they don't buy the Cataclysm expansion. They've basically handed every WoW player a free expansion, in addition to the new paid expansion that's currently available.
I wasn't terribly interested when I first heard about this... And, while a lot of the teasers look very nice, I'm even less interested these days.
I like BioWare's games. I generally enjoy the Star Wars universe as well. I thoroughly enjoyed KotOR.
But BioWare's strength, in my opinion, is in their storytelling. And it's hard to develop much of a story in an MMOG.
The other problem is that the Star Wars universe doesn't lend itself all that well got an MMOG framework. As pointed out in the summary - Jedi will be the most popular class. But from a lore standpoint it really doesn't make much sense to have everyone running around as a Jedi.
The end result is a Star Wars setting where everybody is a Jedi. Everybody has a lightsaber and Force powers and everything else. And yet they're running around killing rats to grind up to the next level. And whatever big badguy you go defeat to save the universe just re-spawns in a few minutes for somebody else to kill.
Imagine if your ISP did this...people would be irate.
I think I'd actually prefer it to my "unlimited" plan right now.
Let us pay for a block of data... $X for 2 GB/month. $Y for 4 GB/month. Then provision your networks accordingly. No more of this bullshit where they oversell a segment and everybody gets crappy performance.
Or just charge per byte. Give me a handy tool to meter my use... And let me pay for what I use. Again - provision your networks accordingly and don't oversell the hell out of it.
Either way, I'd be a happier customer.
"Unlimited" sounds nice - but it doesn't exist. There are limits. And I'd rather know where the limits are than trip over them in the dark.
Another reason to stop eating meat.
Another reason to stop eating meat? As if there were any reasons to stop eating meat?
Sure, yes, raise the stuff as humanely as possible... And maybe a CAFO isn't that. Stop filling it full of artificial hormones and extra antibiotics and feed it a diet more compatible with its biology... Sure. It'd probably taste better as well.
But stop eating meat? Why on Earth would anyone do that?
Maybe stop eating select types of meat, because you've got dietary restrictions of some sort. If you're tying to eat a low-fat diet or something...
But all meat? Entirely? About the only reason to cut out meat entirely is some kind of knee-jerk emotional reaction to the fact that cute little fluffy animals are getting turned into food.
The fact of the matter is that meat is very good for you. Lots of good vitamins, fats, and protein all in one tasty package. There's a reason that strict vegans/vegetarians wind up taking so many supplements.
Better solution - How about Akamai watches where the actual HTTP/FTP request comes from, rather than the DNS? That should get you closer to the client.
I'll start using my ISP's DNS servers as soon as they figure out how to properly configure/maintain/run them. Until then, OpenDNS and GoogleDNS it is.
I don't understand why Net Admins (such as yourself) block useful tools like Skype. Or streaming radio.
Well, we don't block Skype here... Though we do block streaming radio. I can give you a couple good reasons for both.
1) Bandwidth. A service like Skype or streaming some radio station may not actually take all that much bandwidth itself... But if you've got 10 or 100 or 1,000 folks using it simultaneously the bandwidth requirements get quite steep. And it's un-necessary bandwidth. You could pick up your phone and not hit the Internet, you could turn on a regular radio and not hit the Internet. Businesses don't like to pay for things they don't have to.
2) Security. Granted, streaming radio isn't horribly insecure... And maybe Skype plays fairly nice as well... But the last time I tried to set up some rules to allow Skype through a business's firewall I had to open a horrifyingly large number of ports. Generally speaking, you don't want to allow any more than you have to. And if you've got a working phone on your desk, then you don't have to use Skype, and I don't have to open those ports.
I see a lot of posts pointing out that Amazon is a privately-owned company and free to carry (or not carry) whatever books they like.
This is certainly true.
But this issue is more than just some random retailer deciding not to carry a book they don't like.
Amazon is removing these titles from Kindles. They carried a book, you bought it legally, you owned it, and now Amazon has gone and deleted it. Imagine if you bought a paper book at Barnes & Noble, and they decided to stop carrying it, so they sent somebody around to your house to collect that book and destroy it. This is troubling on a number of levels. It raises plenty of questions about ownership of digital property.
Amazon is also absolutely ginormous. They're one of the (if not the) largest on-line retailers. What they do affects more than just their own business and their own customers. Just like Wal-Mart refusing to carry AO video game titles has basically rendered them non-existant.
I'm not claiming that Amazon does not have the right to do what they did. Nor am I necessarily going to condemn it as a bad thing. But all the folks claiming it isn't a big deal because Amazon is well-within its rights are kind of missing the bigger picture.
But even if I classed everything that's done in SW as "magic" and not science, it's still a lot easier for me to set aside disbelief in that film than in either Tron film. Tron shows something I *know* doesn't and can't exist, rather than show something that in all probability doesn't exist. For me, it isn't science, it isn't magic, it isn't even fantasy. It's just a dumb idea and I can't suspend disbelief long enough to make it work for me.
That's my point though.
In Star Wars, the average viewer isn't as intimately acquainted with the physics that makes all that stuff patently ridiculous. So it's easy to gloss over it and imagine a world where it can all work.
In TRON, you're so familiar with how electronics and software actually work, that you're unable to imagine a world where they work differently.
And presenting such a world isn't seen as fantasy or magic, but as an insult to your intelligence.
It isn't that I don't have enough imagination, it's just that if you're going to show me a talking rock and call it science, you'd better give me a very good scientific explanation about where it got its mind and ability to talk, else it isn't really science fiction.
I'll agree with that...
And, while TRON is labeled/marketed as science fiction, I don't think that label applies. It could probably best be called science fantasy.
So, I disagree. Plausability is essential to good science fiction.
If we're talking about real science fiction... The kind of stuff that's genuinely based on real science... Then I'll agree with you.
Even Star Wars, which stretches the plausability quite a bit in parts, I can handle. I can think of potential ways light sabers might work that depend upon understanding of concepts we don't yet understand, and if you can do light sabers, anything else in the film is easy.
So... Magically sapient programs inside a computer are unbelievable...
But light that acts like a physical sword, and magical powers like telekinesis, and space ships that can magically travel faster than the speed of light... Those are all OK?
I'm sorry, but Star Wars isn't plausible at all. Star Wars definitely deserves to be filed under science fantasy.
If MobileMe or whatever it's called has tough us anything it's that Apples cloud stuff suck. If it's going to be expensive and locked in just for the sake of locking in I'm not going. Though I wouldn't buy the freaking Apple device to begin with..
I don't know that I'd call MobileMe expensive... It's only about $100/year. That's less than I'm paying for my WoW account.
And I don't know that I'd call it especially locked-in either. Granted, it's designed by Apple for Apple devices... But there's also a Windows install and a web client.
May I assume that a Google tablet cloud service would be free of charge? ..
Well, it'd probably be free of charge... But it'll likely be supported by ads. Which plenty of people will object to. Especially since Google will be scraping your email for context to generate that advertising.
And it'll likely be just as "locked in" as MobileMe is.
The Open Source Initiative, founded by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond was founded in 1998, 12 years ago as of 2010. This is what the article refers to.
They may have coined the term, registered the domain, and made it all official...
But I was using open source software before 1998. And referring to it as "open source", too.
Try more than 15 years since the movement began. When the history ain't right I don't bother to RTFA.
Yeah... That's what I was thinking... Maybe they're talking about the official OSI or something?
Open Source has been around for a lot longer than 12 years though...
It wouldn't look like anything at all because due to blizzards fascist grade tos they would have everyone banned for botting/macros.
They would then release a Blizzard-certified movement-controlled-wow-interface for $300.
There's a huge difference between botting and using a fancy input device.
Lots of people use macro-friendly input devices like the fancy Logitech keyboards. I personally used a Nostromo n52 for years.
More specifically, my main issue with the OP's point is that the movie's anthropomorphization of the computer's inner workings is too obviously inaccurate
Of course it is. And it always was.
anyone who knows anything about computers can easily see that it's just a thin sheen of technobabble hastily thrown on top of a standard action movie.
And that's where things fall apart.
Back in the 80's when TRON first came out, nobody knew any better. Computers were mysterious and magical. It was believable (not accurate, but folks were willing to suspend their disbelief long enough to enjoy the movie).
These days everybody knows that the bits running through their machines are not anthropomorphic.
Worse, imagination seems to have gone out of style.
Props to the guy they got to do the UNIX commands in the real life scenes, but other than that, the tech stuff was so out of this world that it left none of what good sci-fi needs to engage the viewer -- that thin line of plausibility and the possibility that our world could really become like the one in the movie one day.
Sure, plausibility is good... But I wouldn't say that it's essential to good sci-fi. There's a lot of "good" sci-fi out there that isn't plausible at all.
I think the people that saw the original Tron at the time remember it as a much better movie than it really was.
Nah. I saw the original TRON at the time... And I own it, so I've watched it several times over the years. It isn't an amazing movie.
The plot is a little weird. The acting isn't amazing. The pacing is slow and awkward. The main reason to go see it was the special effects. It was the first movie I saw with computer generated effects. It was absolutely amazing at the time. And, while I still like it, the effects haven't aged that well.
While we all decry that sort of thing as laziness and lack of imagination these days, when we think back to that original movie we think of how cool it looked to us at the time, and gloss over the bad parts (like the plot and the pacing). The only imagination required to appreciate the new Tron is the imagination it takes to believe your nostalgic view of the original is an accurate measure of the quality of the film.
When TRON originally came out, computers were mysterious.
We'd just purchased some kind of EPSON machine for my mother, who was a teacher and used it for word processing. It has BASIC on it and ran some form of DOS. I spent hours upon hours just messing around with simple programs... Making it spam my name across the screen and things like that. It seemed like magic. And that computer was incredibly limited... There was a sense that if you could just crank these things to 11, you could do anything.
That's what TRON tied in to. The mystery and magic surrounding computers.
Folks were finally starting to see computers in the classroom and at home... And they seemed to be far beyond human comprehension. You had to learn obscure commands to make them do anything... And they'd do strange things that you didn't intend... But, if you knew what you were doing, you could make them dance.
Look at other movies of the time - Wargames and DARYL, for example. Folks really thought their home computers would be talking and thinking for themselves before too long. That human-like AI was just around the corner. Nobody knew any better.
And while nobody honestly believed that your programs were wandering around on the grid having conversations with each-other... It didn't seem quite so impossible.
These days that mystery and magic are just plain gone. And the idea that programs are fully sentient and having conversations with each-other inside your computer is simply ridiculous.
Disney tried to basically do the same thing with this movie, relying heavily on special effects.
Maybe I watch too much sci-fi crap to know what heavy special effects are... Maybe I've become desensitized... But the effects in TRON: Legacy didn't seem that heavy to me.
I mean, obviously, you've got the 3D thing going on... And it's taking place inside a computer, so much of the landscape is virtual... And everybody is glowing...
But, compared to something like Avatar? Or any of the Pixar stuff? Or even something like Sky Captain?
The effects in TRON: Legacy seem rather restrained and tasteful to me... Omnipresent, of course... Which can't be avoided, considering the setting... But restrained and tasteful none the less.
It doesn't matter how old you are, or how you felt about the original movie. This one apparently has good graphics with a poor plot.
Eh... I really don't think the plot is all that bad. Certainly not as bad as Transformers, 2012, or Doom.
It makes as much sense as the original TRON did.
In the beginning scenes, they're careful not to show too much of the youthful Flynn. You get a lot of back-of-the-head and profile shots. There's dim light and plenty of shadows. You only get the one good look at his face, and he isn't talking or anything at that moment - just looking fondly at his kid. So they're obviously trying to hide the flaws of the digital process, and trying to make it look as realistic as possible. Maybe the technology isn't quite there... But it works pretty well in those early scenes.
Later, inside the machine, when you meet CLU... No, he isn't quite right. And I think that's the point. He isn't even just a regular program - he's a digital clone of Flynn. He's Flynn's idealism personified. He's some kind of attempt at forging an abstract thing into a concrete existence. I think he's supposed to look a little off, so we know that there's something wrong with him. (Which is also why he hasn't aged at all.)
This game is so great! But the gameplay on a PC is subpar... You should definitely buy the specialized hardware that we just so happen to be selling!
I don't see why you'd need specialized hardware.
There've been console to USB adapters for various controllers for years now if you really wanted to use an official controller. Or you could just use an Xbox360 controller, which work fine on computers. Or you could buy one of the many gamepads available for computers.
It looks like a flaw on the part of the cover maker. Amazon could put some amperage limiting circuitry, but I imagine it would raise the cost.
That'd certainly be a more permanent and universal fix...
But I think something easier would simply be to require that manufacturers use plastic for those clips instead of metal.
I don't know how one would get a job at a place like that without having worn a suit and tie to the interview. If they're telling people how to tie a necktie after the fact, isn't it too late?
Clip-on.
So uh a business whose employees deal with customers on a daily basis in an industry where projecting an image of professionalism is very important has developed a guide to aid their employees? This just sounds like common sense to me.
Yup. Every business has a dress code. Some do uniforms... Some just tell you how you need to dress... Isn't that unusual.
43 pages sounds a bit insane
It does. And I assumed that it was all kinds of legalese...
until you actually look at it. Large print, lots of diagrams, lots of whitespace/formatting not 43 walls of text. It actually looks pretty clean and readable.
Not just clean and readable, but actually useful. There's instructions on how to tie a necktie. I don't know how to tie a necktie. If I got a job at one of those banks I'd have to go dig up some instructions on-line... Or I could just use the nice document that HR provides during orientation. That'd actually be handy.
Sadly, I'm sure that very few if any hardware vendor will change their behavior after this breach of security. Caveat emptor.
Probably not.
Your average home use is never going to see this information. And if they do get bitten by it, they'll never know why or how.
The folks who are seeing this information are unlikely to be using these devices with stock firmware. And even if they are, they've probably taken measures to secure their network in other ways.