I generally agree with masdog on the bit about being hung upside down in the ice cave in Hoth. It's probably the cold, his wounds, and hanging upside down that would have more of an effect than fatigue -- especially considering that he'd been unconscious for a while. Most fatigue systems reset after rest, after all, so they wouldn't simulate this well.
George Lucas's inability to deal with human limitations except in the rarest plot points doesn't have to limit my imagining of how the Star Wars universe works. This is probably also why I like the Knigts of the Old Republic, it is much 'grittier' than the movies.
Now if you actually don't like space opera and prefer a grittier feel, then that's another thing entirely. By all means, if that's the kind of game you want to run, feel free to include such a mechanic; it would be helpful there. However, in a mainline Star Wars product, it's a good thing that Force powers don't run out because it's meant to simulate the feel of the movies. It's not that George Lucas is "[unable] to deal with human limitations" anymore than Steven Chow was in Shaolin Soccer or Kung Fu Hustle; it's just that realistic human limitations aren't a part of the genre of the movies they were making.
In fiction, it is generally when the character's are at their limit that things are the most interesting, and setting that limit too high results in games that are dull soap operas.
Well, for story purposes, it's when a character has to overcome adversity that things become interesting. Reaching physical limits is just one form of adversity -- a way of raising the stakes. There are others, and which forms of adversity are more interesting than others is a matter of personal preference.
At any rate, few game systems really use fatigue mechanics to achieve a form of tension -- instead they are generally used as a limiter to prevent PCs from getting out of hand or to make them act more cautiously. For instance, in a cyberpunk or film noir game, you want the PCs to be able to be overcome by forces much larger than them (like the cops). However, in a pulp or kung fu game, you want characters to be able to take out large numbers of mooks, and you want the only brake on PCs to be other powerful NPCs.
The best games that let PCs deplete resources are games with set-piece adventures -- cyberpunk games like Shadowrun where PCs generally have a limited arena that they'll be operating in for a limited duration or dungeon-crawls like D&D where the ability to recover is constrained in a properly designed dungeon. It's definitely possible to run Star Wars like this, but the movies tend to have a number of very long-running action sequences (e.g. rescuing Leia from the Death Star, fighting droid armies on the Guild ship, etc.) that wouldn't do well in a resource-depletion system.
Anyway, it's my contention that a Star Wars game focused on reproducing the feel of the movies would be harmed by a system that lets Jedi get tired and have to take a break instead of just kicking butt all the way to the bad guy. A game focused on generating a different feel is free to have such a system, but it isn't Star Wars at that point.
I'm not suggesting that the balance in Star Wars needs to be set at the same place as it was in Shadowrun.
It doesn't matter where the balance is, it's simply a matter of the fact that Jedi don't get fatigued from using the Force in the movies. Yoda doesn't get tired after lifting an X-Wing or bouncing about like a weasel on methamphetamine. Qui-Gon shows no fatigue from throwing about droids or running all over the place. The Emperor shows no sign over ever running out of lightning bolts to toss at Luke. Not once that I can think of does a Jedi or Sith show fatigue from the use of the Force.
It's not a manner of tweaking the balance -- it's a matter of the mechanic being utterly inappropriate for simulating the game world you're trying to play in. A fatigue system for Jedi makes about as much sense as a Vancian magic system does. Force powers are not exhaustible in the setting.
On a related note, neither is physical stamina. Heroes in Star Wars never seem to get tired no matter how much they push themselves. They might complain a little, but when the action is running, they don't get out of breath and slow down. Exhaustion is not an appropriate mechanic for a pulp/space opera setting as it violates the genre's style conventions on heroic action. Exhaustion mechanics belong in "grittier" settings such as noir or low fantasy.
It was a requirement before? The amount of fun you could have in a game was determined by how high a certain attribute was, as opposed to the interaction you had between the players and the GM? I guess if you measure success by "I can do more damage in less time than you, therefore my character is cooler and I win the game" it's a requirement...
I think what he's saying is that there's no longer a feeling that you have to play a certain type of character to feel "useful" in the party. If you're okay playing second banana all the time in a game, that's fine, but a lot of people feel unhappy if their character is always eclipsed by other members of the party.
A game that lets the smuggler and the princess occasionally shine as much as the Jedi isn't a bad thing. It's one thing to say that a game isn't supposed to be about the mechanics, but the mechanics of a game can place certain restrictions on how players interact with each other and the game world that can either enhance or limit fun. System does matter.
The d20 standard system is a gamist system. All its rewards are geared towards triumphing in combat. If you don't pay attention to that in character design, the game will not reward you as much as those that do. Hopefully, the system of the new Star Wars will make it less difficult to triumph without having to obsess over complex mechanics and in doing so stop punishing people who don't play maxed out Jedis.
The one thing the WEG version was missing was limits on using Jedi Powers. The ideal Star Wars, to me, combines the west end games version with Shadowrun. Fatigue for using special powers [...]
Since when do Jedi get tired from using the Force? That never happens in the movies, even when it looks like they're straining themselves doing something hard. The limits on Jedi powers seem to be more that of mental stumbling blocks than a reserve of stamina. Frankly, the idea of Jedi having limits on how often they can use their powers is quite contrary to the style and feel of Star Wars where Luke casually tosses mind-control around, and Qui-Gon throws droids around like he's playing a game of kick-the-can.
Actually, it's more complex than that. Orkut is a social networking site which was initially invite-only (up until late in 2006). At some point early in its growth, some extremists got on Orkut and started inviting all their extremist buddies on board to use Orkut's easy to create discussion boards. As a result, Orkut got a lot of bad press early on for harboring hate groups.
Basically, it was a nice lesson in why offering exclusive sign-ups to people who are invited by existing members can poison a social network if the wrong kind of people end up as early adopters. More innocently, it also resulted in the service being used more by Brazilians than any other nationality (even Americans) because users there apparently were far more prolific about sending out invites.
Then I consider her a minor hero for having the clarity of mind to realize that there's not much she can do to help and for making an effort to swiftly continue on her way without holding up traffic behind her like all the idiots who are rubbernecking to get a vicarious thrill off of someone else's misfortune.
If more people were like her, we wouldn't have traffic jams after traffic accidents due to people indulging in their curiosity at the expense of others.
Sure, he was born in Conneticut, but his family moved to Texas when he was two. He probably doesn't even have any memories of living in Conneticut as a child. Texas was where he grew up; Texas was what shaped him.
Besides, from his way to speech to his hobbies to his attitude on life, the man screams rich Texan stereotype almost as badly as Ross Perot. There's not a lick of Conneticut in him. Now his father's definitely got that New England elite touch to him, but Dubya is as dipped in Texas as you can get.
The sad part here is folks are getting bent out of shape over this, and it happens all the time in other businesses. Someone buys out company, brings in various "pet investor friends", milks the company a little, then sells it off. The employees that made the company get shit on, and the investors make a fortune.
I think that it's far sadder that this sort of behavior no longer provokes outrage in some people, like yourself. Do you really that's it's okay that this is business as usual?
Really, people that pretend that they're wiser for their apathetic cynicism just get on my last nerve sometimes.
The book addresses the overconsumption myth quite handily in chapter 2. The primary differences between the finances of a single-provider family from the 70s and a two income family of today is that housing prices have more than doubled. Just between 1983 and 1998, the price of house than an average family with children bought rose from $98K to $175K, adjusted for inflation.
The problem with consumer debt is a combination of a bidding war for housing close to good schools and the deregulation of the debt industry thanks to a Supreme Court decision that allowed for financial institutions to ignore the usury laws of other states when lending to people there. This led to a profusion of easily available credit at ludicrous interest rates. As a result, instead of shutting out families from mortgages that couldn't afford the good rates, financially unstable families are now being targetted with sub-prime mortgages and cheap credit cards.
Naturally, when all these financially risky people started getting in trouble, the response was not to put the financial industry back under control with new efforts against predatory lending but to ram through an anti-bankruptcy bill that actually put paying off credit card debt before making child support payments. What we really need is a federal anti-usury law to clamp down on out-of-control debt offerings.
Deuteronomy 13:6-10 ... So, yes, a true Christian is absolutely *required* to murder any close friend or relative who points out that their god is an idiotic delusion and they should grow up and start dealing with reality.
This is a fine example of taking quotes out of context in a subject matter one is unfamiliar with and is biased against. Perhaps you should look instead to John 8:1-11, the tale of the adultress where the Pharisees drag a woman accused of adultery before Jesus to demand that she be stoned in accordance with Deuteronomy 22:22. However, Jesus instead responds, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone." When they leave in shame, he asks the woman if any still codemn her, and when she responsds that no one does, then he says, "Then neither do I condemn you, go now and sin no more."
There are many sections of the New Testament where portions of the Old Testament are reinterpreted or refuted. The food laws in Deuteronomy 14 are openly repealed in Acts 10. The mandate to stone to all breakers of the law is replaced by a message of forgiveness and redemption. To miss out on that is to wholly and completely miss the entire point of the gospel of Jesus. This is beyond twisting a few statements here and there. This is a blatant assertion that the message of Christianity is the exact opposite of the gospel of Jesus.
Twilight Princess was great, but isn't it past time to deprecate text-only dialog.
It's harder to screw up a game with text-only dialog than it is to screw up one with voice acting because of the choice of a flat and talentless voice actor or two (or ten). I can think of a few games that I've found seriously hurt by voice acting -- the first Grandia game and Shenmue immediately come to mind.
(Good lord was Shenmue's voice acting terrible. It was like a dry read by tone-deaf people.)
Most of the best brains at Square have left to do other things. One of those other things is the company Mistwalker. Their debut RPG -- Blue Dragon -- has Sakaguchi the creator of Final Fantasy I-X doing the design, Uematsu the composer for Final Fantasy I-X doing music, and Toriyama the character designer for Dragon Quest I-VIII all on board.
Ever since the Square-Enix merger, all the inventiveness seems to have been sucked out of Square, and they've become a true sequel and spin-off factory with too much interest in milking their primary brand. I personally don't have high hopes for FF XIII after the mostly plotless and free of character development FF XII.
I may end up being forced to buy an Xbox 360 to keep getting what I've been getting out of Square since I was a kid back in the days of FF1. I think they peaked with FF X, and it's been downhill ever since.
5. It's easy to stay outside the system - unless there are regular checkpoints and official stop and searches.
Oh, really? Got any advice for those of us trapped in it?
I might like to own a house someday, and I currently enjoy the ability to rent an apartment -- which you can't do without giving over your SSN so that people can run a credit check on you. I also like having a job, but it's getting impossible to find a job where someone doesn't want your SSN for credit checks, and they have to have it anyway for doing your tax and insurance paperwork. Speaking of which, try driving legally without getting insurance which requires -- you guessed it -- your social security number.
Frankly, I'd really like to know how our own illegal immigrant get by, but hearing more about yours might be handy enough. It would be nice to be able to get "off the grid" without being independantly wealthy and/or breaking laws in the process.
I haven't played a Castlevania game since the NES days (with the exception of Symphony of the Night), so I don't get this one. I hate to ask, but could you explain the joke?
I think he's referring to things like waterboarding as opposed to putting someone on the rack.
You know, making someone crack by making them think they're drowning to death but not actually leaving permanent physical damage vs. ripping up their body and leaving them crippled or dead -- the infamous "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" standard for defining torture that left out methods that left permanent psychological damage.
The core argument of the analogy is: If people behaved properly, we wouldn't need an entire field of work to clean up after them.
If people coded properly, we wouldn't need security products. If people obeyed the law, we wouldn't need cops. In other words, "No kidding, Schneier. Welcome to the real world, where people don't act ln an ideal manner."
You're reading things far too literally (focusing on the details in the difference in security modesl) to get the core message.
They say people who watch wrestling are more likely to be violent. I ask, is it not the other way around? Perhaps people who are naturally violent are more likely to watch wrestling?
The answer, which most people don't seem to see, is that it's both. Watching aggressive stimulus makes one more accustomed to aggression, and aggressive entertainment makes aggression seem more entertaining. Those who are used to finding aggression entertaining seek out stronger aggression for entertainment and many settle on wrestling.
Very, very few relationships in life are one-way. Human behavior is very often tied to feedback loops and reinforcement.
The most likely truth would be that it increases aggressive tendencies but lets this aggression be let out in a harmless fashion. It's not like it has to be only one or the other.
People get way too defensive about this. I mean, really, is there any doubt in any other sphere or life from driving to watching sports to riots to shopping on the day after Thanksgiving that when people are exposed to competitive and violent stimulus, they themselves become more aggressive? Why should violent video games and movies be different in any way?
The question which hasn't been solidly answered is whether or not the increased aggression boils over into other forms of interaction.
My favorite parasite that he covered unfortunately didn't make it into Parasite Rex. On his blog he covered Ampulex compressa a wasp that "zombifies" roaches by inserting a stinger into their brain, piloting them back to the wasp's nest, injecting them with a venom that keeps them alive in suspended animation for eight days while one of its larva eats the roach's organs and then pupates inside the shell of the now finally dead roach which is bursts out of four weeks later.
The suspended animation and the laying of eggs inside is pretty neat/creepy, but it's the way the wasp doesn't paralyze the roach but instead enslaves it and directly manipulates its motion back to its nest that's the most fascinating thing about it to me.
That's not the most disturbing problem with it in my opinion. T. gondii's life cycle basically involves inhabiting cats and mice. In mice, it causes reckless behavior and poorer reflexes to encourage predation of its hosts by cats. Similarly, in humans, it also seems to encourage the same sort of problems. This results in a doubling or tripling in the likelihood that a T. gondii infected human will get into a traffic accident. Note that current estimates are that 30-60% of the populace has latent Toxoplasmosis.
(Incidentally, T. gondii isn't a worm. It's a protozoa.)
On a related note, was Hitler a moderate simply because he was at war with both the capitalist democracies of the West and the communist dictatorship of the East?
Short answer: No, who your external enemies and friend are do not necessarily reflect the economic stance of your own country.
Long answer: Hitler was an economic moderate because National Socialism was a semi-rightist totalitarian system that shared control of the country between government officials and industry leaders. The economy was semi-planned, but much of the planning was done by government recognized monopolies and cartels instead of by the government itself. In addition, property was assumed in general to belong to the citizen instead of to the state. That last distinction is very important between leftist and rightist totalitarian economies and is one of the few places where they don't blur together much.
As for defining them by allies, note that the Nazis and the Communists were initially allies until they turned on each other, and a sizeable portion of the wealthy and of the intelligentsia of America in the late 30s were more sympathetic to Germany than to England. Hilter wrote quite glowingly of Americans in his writing, praising them and considering them as potential fearsome rivals. The clash of powers was more pragmatic than ideological until the war got started and the propoganda started up. History largely writes it as a war against an evil power that massacred Jews, but it got started more out of a fear of the balance of power.
I mean, what kind of nation are we that is allied with both Norway and Saudi Arabia?
Considering that numbers are absolutes and "left vs. right" are relative positions like "hot vs. cold," I'd say that your rebuttal is ridiculous.
I'm guessing by the angry, defensive tenor of your post at something that either purports to portray a more liberal point of view as the norm or at something which might somehow be construed to be critical of America and by the confusion between absolute and relative truths that you count yourself as a conservative, right?
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I generally agree with masdog on the bit about being hung upside down in the ice cave in Hoth. It's probably the cold, his wounds, and hanging upside down that would have more of an effect than fatigue -- especially considering that he'd been unconscious for a while. Most fatigue systems reset after rest, after all, so they wouldn't simulate this well.
George Lucas's inability to deal with human limitations except in the rarest plot points doesn't have to limit my imagining of how the Star Wars universe works. This is probably also why I like the Knigts of the Old Republic, it is much 'grittier' than the movies.
Now if you actually don't like space opera and prefer a grittier feel, then that's another thing entirely. By all means, if that's the kind of game you want to run, feel free to include such a mechanic; it would be helpful there. However, in a mainline Star Wars product, it's a good thing that Force powers don't run out because it's meant to simulate the feel of the movies. It's not that George Lucas is "[unable] to deal with human limitations" anymore than Steven Chow was in Shaolin Soccer or Kung Fu Hustle; it's just that realistic human limitations aren't a part of the genre of the movies they were making.
In fiction, it is generally when the character's are at their limit that things are the most interesting, and setting that limit too high results in games that are dull soap operas.
Well, for story purposes, it's when a character has to overcome adversity that things become interesting. Reaching physical limits is just one form of adversity -- a way of raising the stakes. There are others, and which forms of adversity are more interesting than others is a matter of personal preference.
At any rate, few game systems really use fatigue mechanics to achieve a form of tension -- instead they are generally used as a limiter to prevent PCs from getting out of hand or to make them act more cautiously. For instance, in a cyberpunk or film noir game, you want the PCs to be able to be overcome by forces much larger than them (like the cops). However, in a pulp or kung fu game, you want characters to be able to take out large numbers of mooks, and you want the only brake on PCs to be other powerful NPCs.
The best games that let PCs deplete resources are games with set-piece adventures -- cyberpunk games like Shadowrun where PCs generally have a limited arena that they'll be operating in for a limited duration or dungeon-crawls like D&D where the ability to recover is constrained in a properly designed dungeon. It's definitely possible to run Star Wars like this, but the movies tend to have a number of very long-running action sequences (e.g. rescuing Leia from the Death Star, fighting droid armies on the Guild ship, etc.) that wouldn't do well in a resource-depletion system.
Anyway, it's my contention that a Star Wars game focused on reproducing the feel of the movies would be harmed by a system that lets Jedi get tired and have to take a break instead of just kicking butt all the way to the bad guy. A game focused on generating a different feel is free to have such a system, but it isn't Star Wars at that point.
I'm not suggesting that the balance in Star Wars needs to be set at the same place as it was in Shadowrun.
It doesn't matter where the balance is, it's simply a matter of the fact that Jedi don't get fatigued from using the Force in the movies. Yoda doesn't get tired after lifting an X-Wing or bouncing about like a weasel on methamphetamine. Qui-Gon shows no fatigue from throwing about droids or running all over the place. The Emperor shows no sign over ever running out of lightning bolts to toss at Luke. Not once that I can think of does a Jedi or Sith show fatigue from the use of the Force.
It's not a manner of tweaking the balance -- it's a matter of the mechanic being utterly inappropriate for simulating the game world you're trying to play in. A fatigue system for Jedi makes about as much sense as a Vancian magic system does. Force powers are not exhaustible in the setting.
On a related note, neither is physical stamina. Heroes in Star Wars never seem to get tired no matter how much they push themselves. They might complain a little, but when the action is running, they don't get out of breath and slow down. Exhaustion is not an appropriate mechanic for a pulp/space opera setting as it violates the genre's style conventions on heroic action. Exhaustion mechanics belong in "grittier" settings such as noir or low fantasy.
It was a requirement before? The amount of fun you could have in a game was determined by how high a certain attribute was, as opposed to the interaction you had between the players and the GM? I guess if you measure success by "I can do more damage in less time than you, therefore my character is cooler and I win the game" it's a requirement...
I think what he's saying is that there's no longer a feeling that you have to play a certain type of character to feel "useful" in the party. If you're okay playing second banana all the time in a game, that's fine, but a lot of people feel unhappy if their character is always eclipsed by other members of the party.
A game that lets the smuggler and the princess occasionally shine as much as the Jedi isn't a bad thing. It's one thing to say that a game isn't supposed to be about the mechanics, but the mechanics of a game can place certain restrictions on how players interact with each other and the game world that can either enhance or limit fun. System does matter.
The d20 standard system is a gamist system. All its rewards are geared towards triumphing in combat. If you don't pay attention to that in character design, the game will not reward you as much as those that do. Hopefully, the system of the new Star Wars will make it less difficult to triumph without having to obsess over complex mechanics and in doing so stop punishing people who don't play maxed out Jedis.
The one thing the WEG version was missing was limits on using Jedi Powers. The ideal Star Wars, to me, combines the west end games version with Shadowrun. Fatigue for using special powers [...]
Since when do Jedi get tired from using the Force? That never happens in the movies, even when it looks like they're straining themselves doing something hard. The limits on Jedi powers seem to be more that of mental stumbling blocks than a reserve of stamina. Frankly, the idea of Jedi having limits on how often they can use their powers is quite contrary to the style and feel of Star Wars where Luke casually tosses mind-control around, and Qui-Gon throws droids around like he's playing a game of kick-the-can.
Actually, it's more complex than that. Orkut is a social networking site which was initially invite-only (up until late in 2006). At some point early in its growth, some extremists got on Orkut and started inviting all their extremist buddies on board to use Orkut's easy to create discussion boards. As a result, Orkut got a lot of bad press early on for harboring hate groups.
Basically, it was a nice lesson in why offering exclusive sign-ups to people who are invited by existing members can poison a social network if the wrong kind of people end up as early adopters. More innocently, it also resulted in the service being used more by Brazilians than any other nationality (even Americans) because users there apparently were far more prolific about sending out invites.
Then I consider her a minor hero for having the clarity of mind to realize that there's not much she can do to help and for making an effort to swiftly continue on her way without holding up traffic behind her like all the idiots who are rubbernecking to get a vicarious thrill off of someone else's misfortune.
If more people were like her, we wouldn't have traffic jams after traffic accidents due to people indulging in their curiosity at the expense of others.
Sure, he was born in Conneticut, but his family moved to Texas when he was two. He probably doesn't even have any memories of living in Conneticut as a child. Texas was where he grew up; Texas was what shaped him.
Besides, from his way to speech to his hobbies to his attitude on life, the man screams rich Texan stereotype almost as badly as Ross Perot. There's not a lick of Conneticut in him. Now his father's definitely got that New England elite touch to him, but Dubya is as dipped in Texas as you can get.
The sad part here is folks are getting bent out of shape over this, and it happens all the time in other businesses. Someone buys out company, brings in various "pet investor friends", milks the company a little, then sells it off. The employees that made the company get shit on, and the investors make a fortune.
I think that it's far sadder that this sort of behavior no longer provokes outrage in some people, like yourself.
Do you really that's it's okay that this is business as usual?
Really, people that pretend that they're wiser for their apathetic cynicism just get on my last nerve sometimes.
The book addresses the overconsumption myth quite handily in chapter 2. The primary differences between the finances of a single-provider family from the 70s and a two income family of today is that housing prices have more than doubled. Just between 1983 and 1998, the price of house than an average family with children bought rose from $98K to $175K, adjusted for inflation.
The problem with consumer debt is a combination of a bidding war for housing close to good schools and the deregulation of the debt industry thanks to a Supreme Court decision that allowed for financial institutions to ignore the usury laws of other states when lending to people there. This led to a profusion of easily available credit at ludicrous interest rates. As a result, instead of shutting out families from mortgages that couldn't afford the good rates, financially unstable families are now being targetted with sub-prime mortgages and cheap credit cards.
Naturally, when all these financially risky people started getting in trouble, the response was not to put the financial industry back under control with new efforts against predatory lending but to ram through an anti-bankruptcy bill that actually put paying off credit card debt before making child support payments. What we really need is a federal anti-usury law to clamp down on out-of-control debt offerings.
Deuteronomy 13:6-10
...
So, yes, a true Christian is absolutely *required* to murder any close friend or relative who points out that their god is an idiotic delusion and they should grow up and start dealing with reality.
This is a fine example of taking quotes out of context in a subject matter one is unfamiliar with and is biased against. Perhaps you should look instead to John 8:1-11, the tale of the adultress where the Pharisees drag a woman accused of adultery before Jesus to demand that she be stoned in accordance with Deuteronomy 22:22. However, Jesus instead responds, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone." When they leave in shame, he asks the woman if any still codemn her, and when she responsds that no one does, then he says, "Then neither do I condemn you, go now and sin no more."
There are many sections of the New Testament where portions of the Old Testament are reinterpreted or refuted. The food laws in Deuteronomy 14 are openly repealed in Acts 10. The mandate to stone to all breakers of the law is replaced by a message of forgiveness and redemption. To miss out on that is to wholly and completely miss the entire point of the gospel of Jesus. This is beyond twisting a few statements here and there. This is a blatant assertion that the message of Christianity is the exact opposite of the gospel of Jesus.
In other words: RTFB, newb. <g>
Twilight Princess was great, but isn't it past time to deprecate text-only dialog.
It's harder to screw up a game with text-only dialog than it is to screw up one with voice acting because of the choice of a flat and talentless voice actor or two (or ten). I can think of a few games that I've found seriously hurt by voice acting -- the first Grandia game and Shenmue immediately come to mind.
(Good lord was Shenmue's voice acting terrible. It was like a dry read by tone-deaf people.)
On a related note: Hey, listen!
Most of the best brains at Square have left to do other things. One of those other things is the company Mistwalker. Their debut RPG -- Blue Dragon -- has Sakaguchi the creator of Final Fantasy I-X doing the design, Uematsu the composer for Final Fantasy I-X doing music, and Toriyama the character designer for Dragon Quest I-VIII all on board.
Ever since the Square-Enix merger, all the inventiveness seems to have been sucked out of Square, and they've become a true sequel and spin-off factory with too much interest in milking their primary brand. I personally don't have high hopes for FF XIII after the mostly plotless and free of character development FF XII.
I may end up being forced to buy an Xbox 360 to keep getting what I've been getting out of Square since I was a kid back in the days of FF1. I think they peaked with FF X, and it's been downhill ever since.
5. It's easy to stay outside the system - unless there are regular checkpoints and official stop and searches.
Oh, really? Got any advice for those of us trapped in it?
I might like to own a house someday, and I currently enjoy the ability to rent an apartment -- which you can't do without giving over your SSN so that people can run a credit check on you. I also like having a job, but it's getting impossible to find a job where someone doesn't want your SSN for credit checks, and they have to have it anyway for doing your tax and insurance paperwork. Speaking of which, try driving legally without getting insurance which requires -- you guessed it -- your social security number.
Frankly, I'd really like to know how our own illegal immigrant get by, but hearing more about yours might be handy enough. It would be nice to be able to get "off the grid" without being independantly wealthy and/or breaking laws in the process.
But, more importantly, a number of countries look to the US for a model of what it means to be free.
Six years ago, that would've made me proud.
Now, it kind of makes me really depressed.
I haven't played a Castlevania game since the NES days (with the exception of Symphony of the Night), so I don't get this one.
I hate to ask, but could you explain the joke?
If Linus were a gold-plated asshole, the rest of LKML would soon figure it out, and go do something more rewarding than sniff his butt crack.
Then explain why OpenBSD hasn't collapsed under the weight of Theo de Raadt's award-winning personality.
I think he's referring to things like waterboarding as opposed to putting someone on the rack.
You know, making someone crack by making them think they're drowning to death but not actually leaving permanent physical damage vs. ripping up their body and leaving them crippled or dead -- the infamous "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" standard for defining torture that left out methods that left permanent psychological damage.
He was a government contractor under this administration.
What makes you think he had to be "bright" to get his job?
The core argument of the analogy is:
If people behaved properly, we wouldn't need an entire field of work to clean up after them.
If people coded properly, we wouldn't need security products.
If people obeyed the law, we wouldn't need cops.
In other words, "No kidding, Schneier. Welcome to the real world, where people don't act ln an ideal manner."
You're reading things far too literally (focusing on the details in the difference in security modesl) to get the core message.
They say people who watch wrestling are more likely to be violent.
I ask, is it not the other way around?
Perhaps people who are naturally violent are more likely to watch wrestling?
The answer, which most people don't seem to see, is that it's both. Watching aggressive stimulus makes one more accustomed to aggression, and aggressive entertainment makes aggression seem more entertaining. Those who are used to finding aggression entertaining seek out stronger aggression for entertainment and many settle on wrestling.
Very, very few relationships in life are one-way. Human behavior is very often tied to feedback loops and reinforcement.
The most likely truth would be that it increases aggressive tendencies but lets this aggression be let out in a harmless fashion. It's not like it has to be only one or the other.
People get way too defensive about this. I mean, really, is there any doubt in any other sphere or life from driving to watching sports to riots to shopping on the day after Thanksgiving that when people are exposed to competitive and violent stimulus, they themselves become more aggressive? Why should violent video games and movies be different in any way?
The question which hasn't been solidly answered is whether or not the increased aggression boils over into other forms of interaction.
My favorite parasite that he covered unfortunately didn't make it into Parasite Rex. On his blog he covered Ampulex compressa a wasp that "zombifies" roaches by inserting a stinger into their brain, piloting them back to the wasp's nest, injecting them with a venom that keeps them alive in suspended animation for eight days while one of its larva eats the roach's organs and then pupates inside the shell of the now finally dead roach which is bursts out of four weeks later.
The suspended animation and the laying of eggs inside is pretty neat/creepy, but it's the way the wasp doesn't paralyze the roach but instead enslaves it and directly manipulates its motion back to its nest that's the most fascinating thing about it to me.
That's not the most disturbing problem with it in my opinion. T. gondii's life cycle basically involves inhabiting cats and mice. In mice, it causes reckless behavior and poorer reflexes to encourage predation of its hosts by cats. Similarly, in humans, it also seems to encourage the same sort of problems. This results in a doubling or tripling in the likelihood that a T. gondii infected human will get into a traffic accident. Note that current estimates are that 30-60% of the populace has latent Toxoplasmosis.
(Incidentally, T. gondii isn't a worm. It's a protozoa.)
On a related note, was Hitler a moderate simply because he was at war with both the capitalist democracies of the West and the communist dictatorship of the East?
Short answer: No, who your external enemies and friend are do not necessarily reflect the economic stance of your own country.
Long answer: Hitler was an economic moderate because National Socialism was a semi-rightist totalitarian system that shared control of the country between government officials and industry leaders. The economy was semi-planned, but much of the planning was done by government recognized monopolies and cartels instead of by the government itself. In addition, property was assumed in general to belong to the citizen instead of to the state. That last distinction is very important between leftist and rightist totalitarian economies and is one of the few places where they don't blur together much.
As for defining them by allies, note that the Nazis and the Communists were initially allies until they turned on each other, and a sizeable portion of the wealthy and of the intelligentsia of America in the late 30s were more sympathetic to Germany than to England. Hilter wrote quite glowingly of Americans in his writing, praising them and considering them as potential fearsome rivals. The clash of powers was more pragmatic than ideological until the war got started and the propoganda started up. History largely writes it as a war against an evil power that massacred Jews, but it got started more out of a fear of the balance of power.
I mean, what kind of nation are we that is allied with both Norway and Saudi Arabia?
Considering that numbers are absolutes and "left vs. right" are relative positions like "hot vs. cold," I'd say that your rebuttal is ridiculous.
I'm guessing by the angry, defensive tenor of your post at something that either purports to portray a more liberal point of view as the norm or at something which might somehow be construed to be critical of America and by the confusion between absolute and relative truths that you count yourself as a conservative, right?