And the climate scientists who created this report aren't idealogically motivated? I'm sure some are. Some probably aren't. And scientists who respond to the $10,000 bounty may or may not be motivated. Frankly, I don't care about motivations. If you put out a bounty for an open source project, no one gets upset. Why should this be any different? If the scientist trades his/her credibility to create a fraudalent attack on the climate report that's unethical, but the fault of the scientist - not the bounty. ANd I have no doubt the life of such accusations will be short-lived.
If ExonMobile itself wants to offer bounties for this research I really don't care. Let the scientists try to do the research. They will either come up with a valid criticis, or they won't.
It's more like offering a county for someone to code a Wifi driver with an obvious exploit and only paying if at least 1000 use the faulty driver.
What about Oblivion? Would you call that a B or C game? All the reviewers at metacritic seem to agree that it's an A game as I am sure you do. Both the Xbox360 and the PC versions, were single DVD releases. I doubt that the Blu-Ray PS3 version will look any better and possibly will even look worse (for other reasons of course).
Again get the PC version and pop in the 2048x2048 texture pack and some of the improved models to see what they sacraficed to get it onto 1 DVD. also the human forms are distintive but ugly as sin. It was the HDR and bloom effects that made it pretty but the models and texture were wretched out of the box. The hillsides titled because of the limited textures they used. 2048x2048 textures would have added another 400 megs to the disc so they used 512x512 instead and hid the difference under HDR and lighting effects.
Not to mention the anti-PC Apple advertising that is on the air right now. It's like a political contest - if you don't respond soon people will think the meme is true and stop buying PC's altogether. Particularly because A) Apple is attacking Vista head on and B) the commercials are really funny and easily likeable.
The only ones who pay attention to the apple ads are mac fanatics. To the rest of us multi system or Windows only users it's simply insultingly stupid segments that we ensure if we can't change the channel. I doubt there would be a tripple digit number of switchers due to those ads. They simply re-affirm the brand value mac fanatics already experience. Ask any random person what they think of a mac. The repsonses will vayr between "whats a mac" and "nice and shiny. but too expensive". Even thought they are one of the largest home computer manufacturers and the rpice has come to within a resonable margin of PC's. Just liek the "switch" campaign it does little to epxand marketshare.
I doubt that anyone thinks 70mm film looks immenselybetter than DVDs. My DVDs already look just fine as far as im concerned, and I could probably only tell the difference between film and DVD if they were side by side. While 70mm is definetly better, I wouldnt say it is much better.
ummmm.. have you been to a theatre ever? how about seen a big screen? Imax? Just as any quality of mp3 is fine when the volume is low the difference appears when the volume is turned up. 11hz mp3s sound terrible at high volumes compared to 44hz bit just as 480p signals look terrible on a 50" TV compared to 790p or 1080p. On a large enough screen, the difference between 35mm and 70mm is obvious and huge.
I'm not saying games should not progress. What I am saying is their size should not be artificially increased.
If the same quality graphics, sound, and LENGTH of game are coming out on dvd9 as on blu-ray...well, you can finish the sentence.
Texture resolution makes a noticable difference. Try playing oblivion, then playing it with the 2048x2048 texture pack. Models are also important. More complciated models tend to look better. Often character models are created detailed then judiciously scaled down in polys to retain as much of the look as possible while preserving performance and space. Less details need to made up for in better textures or just better design. Compare the hands in FFXII and FFX. Bigger models require more space. Having more diverse enviroments require mroe space. FFXII has more background details then FFX, requiring more models and more space. All noticable changes that require space. 7.1 sound require 2 more sound channels then 5.1 also needing more space. Universal spoken text results in huge volumes of more space required.
In general, A-list games will balloon in size easily. B list and C list may still be unable to fill a single DVD, just due to less content. But more space means you have to make fewer trade offs.
So what you'll see in the future is that the Bluray vs. HD-DVD war won't matter. The real winner will be Internet ala carte providers, who give the consumers what they want, when they want it. Sony shouldn't fear HD-DVD. They should fear Apple iTunes.
Perhaps next generation. But for this revision of video delivery, there still a monolithic population of technology impaired with too much money and too few techno savy people. There is a lack of easy to use downloaded data to TV appliances. Easy to use being the key word. Your Ipod could do. But they are still not DVD player easy to use yet. VCRs and DVD players still partly confound the median consumer. perhaps in 25 years when the last inept boomer dies we may see itunes overtake disc media, but our geek fantasies of seeing everyone download their TV will be some time away.
The severe lack in innovation in video games today is caused by the game companies being tied to making games for the old, tried & true genres. These genres are now so full of titles that there is no longer any room for originality. Take the first person shooter (fps) genre. IT HAS BEEN DONE TO DEATH. There are so many fps games out there that you can choose any setting, play-style, weapons that you want to play with! And yet every time a new fps game comes out the developers try and call it innovative because it adds the tiniest of changes to the standard formula (such as rechargeable health bars Wooopie.) FPS IS DONE. many other genres have also been done to death as well such as: sports, racing, fantasy rpgs etc. There some genres that in my opinion are still open to a lot of expansion. Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) for one still have a long way to go. The game developers need to get off of making MMOs with elfs, dwarfs, and orcs and start putting some interesting stuff into the mix. How about being a cowboy or bandit on the wild west? or being a pirate on the open sea? just now we are starting to see some originality breath life into this genre.
There is the general 80:20 rule. 80% of everythign is complete and utter shit. The reamaining 20 is good to brilliant. Now when we look at anything new, we see that 80% of it is shit and we decry "ohh how bad industry X is". However the only reason we do so is we look back and we can only remember the 80% that wasn't shit. we conviently forget most fo the things before was shit too. We remember how great and fun Kings Quest was and forget how wrtched a lot of the point and clicks were. We remember the greatness of super mario but forget the hundred of generic side scrollers that occured after. We remember gems like MGS or FF6 and forget the pretenders like the tenchu's and Legend of legias. It isn't that the market is stagnant. It's the fact that you not only want innovation, but want innovation that doesn't suck 80% of the time. Most new ideas, and most old ideas are implemented like shit. Look at the starting lineups each of the three systems. There was 1 gem : 4 shits in general. 1 Zelda to 4 red steels. 1 resistance to 4 Cash Guns Chaos. ect... Now at certain times we hit a renasance where for soem happenstance of genetics or circumstance we get more the 20% good stuff. These are rare and far between.
In case of okami it was several factors, it has not been released in Europe yet, so the second biggest gaming market has been blatantly ignored. It should have gone multiplatform, the gaminc concept screams for a mouse or the wiimote, Playstation only was its death nail, while the playstation has a sheer number of consoles, its gamers are not too open minded and feel happy to be fed with Tony Hawk #19 also add to that the next gen hype going on which drowned everything. Probably if Okami would come out on the Wii now, it would get excellent additional sales, but as it seems the game is basically still drowned in brain dead marketing and release dates!
Gaming markets in order of market size: Japan US UK The rest of us.
Europe, if you include the UK, would still be #3. The US and Japanese markets are simply huge.
Bleh. The line that bothers me though isn't so much his thoughts that innovative games have no chance, but rather "Most video game people have read one book and seen one movie in their life, which is 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Aliens' or variations of that. There's great things in that, but you need some variety."
Which reads to me as bullshit of the first order, most of the gamers I know are geeks and geeks in general tend to be movie buffs and/or book readers. Those may well be two of their *favorite* icons but its not all they know.
He's just bringing up the fact that most movies/shows/books can be reduced to a few arch typical stories. The whole mono myth idea. For instance, almost everyone loves zelda. And it's story is? "young hero goes on quest to save a princess... slays a very evil bad guy... saves the world." Now lets see star wars. " young hero goes on quest to save a princess... slays a very evil bad guy... saves the world." or how about eragon, another young geek favorite "young hero goes on quest to save a princess... slays a very evil bad guy... saves the world." Slight variations in willow, the princess is younger. Dark crystal is somewhat in the same vein. LOTR just replace the quest otherwise similiar. ect...
Humans being are simply fairly unoriginal and are uncomfortable when things are too alien. We tend to find a certain pattern we enjoy and then play it with small variations. So long as it changes slightly we dont' get bored. If it changes too much, we decry how the creator raped our childhood.
TA was a niche geek game. It wasn't that great gameplay wise, it was ahead of it's time graphics wise. The strategies degenerated into swarming which mad it predictable and boring. No mater who you swarmed with it's the same strategy. Select all - attack. Little nauance, balanced only because the majority of the early and mid games units are the same. Also games lasted 1+ hours and defence was king encouraging all of the tactics RTS noobs like.
Like C&C you tended to optimize by swarming with mid level units (med tanks for C&C, for TA lotsa mid level bots, at least in all the games I ever witnessed.) You really couldn't attack early due to the comander. By the time you can take the cammander out boths sides have sizable defences. It was fun for a bit but eventually we got bored.
Likely the lack of publishers push was more responsible for it's lower sales though. Since C&C was broing int he exact same ways and sold well.
Does it seem like every day, Apple is seeming less like the good guy?
This isn't flamebait... (I love my Mac) its an observation that IMHO over the past year Apple seems to have been far more agressive at implementing "control" measures through legal means -- not as bad as MSFT, but a far cry f rom the "We want everyone to love us" attitude of the past.
My question is: what changed? And is this the Apple of the future? Or is this a result of some shift in management attitudes. (Or a case of money and power corrupt, no matter who you are?)
Sorry to burst your bubble but Apple has never been the good guy, just the other guy. They are more innovative and do better work then their major competitor Microsoft but their business practices and control measures aren't new. Had they achieved the hegemony that Microsft has, I'd suspect Jobs and his boys would be breaking knee caps and killing kittens similiar to how Gates and the boys have. They were just as aggresive back in the 80's and Jobs is not a nice man. I suspect he's throw chairs too when faced with bad news. He's known for being an agressive business person and a dick. Nothing has changed, the nostalgia and jobs realty distortion field makes you think he must be the second coming.
Actually, I didn't say they shouldn't be allowed to. The OP asked a question, and I answered it. He asked what is wrong with pornography and I replied with the statements you have quoted about people demeaning themselves. I didn't make any statements about what people should be allowed or not allowed to do. The fact that people make a choice to participate in a given behavior doesn't lessen the harm it does to them.
I used to work on the support side of the adult industry. Working as a tech, webmaster and video editor. Let me say that the individuals that end up in porn aren't "hurt" by porn. They are by no means perfect people. They all have some issue or other and often aren't exactly the definition of "together" They are often strippers. They are often in this profession because they like to party and find this the easiest ways to get the money to continue to do so. Some are truly exploited. These girls have a BF that encourages them to get into stripping and the rest of it. Others are strong women who do it because they have no other skills and happen to look nice. For some it's something extra to make rent. They are generally messed up people to start with, so a little filmed action doesn't make it better or worse.
How big is Canada's bloc of religious wackos who think anything sexual is so horrible it needs to be banned? I'm hoping it's significantly smaller than it is in the US so that this excellent example of free speech will hold up as something for America to follow.
I live in the middle of the largest bloc of "wackos", work for the company in question. The wackos are mostly harmless and get pummelled into submission by the minorities and liberal press. Our "conservative wackos" would problably pass as "democrats" in the states.
Are you sure? IMHO, it's equivalent to saying that CSI / TV-Drama's replicates what happens in real life in the real world, but in a more exagerrated way.. And by exagerrated, you would know what I mean. O wait,.. this is slashdot.....
IMHO, I find these morals good in a sense that I would prefer living in area where such good morals are upheld than in one where it isn't. It brings a sense of protection for me, my family, etc
I miss the point of the first sentence. CSI is to crime investigation as Porn is to sex. Both are fake replicas that stress quick umm.. resolution over the truth behind normal situations.
IMHO, areas of strict morality only hide the vices better. Strict morality does not generally make you a better person. For each giving and self sacraficing "moral" person there is a dozen hippocritical, hateful "moral" person. Ditto for the Immoral.
Well, except for the fact that it demeans women (and men for that matter), cheapens and turns a God-given gift into a commodity, reduces human beings from being to people to be loved and honored to being objects and tools for one's one self-gratification-- not much I guess.
Are you talking about pornography or labor. I get confused about the difference....
Personally I see the winning game console being a PC. With the falling cost of high performance hardware getting to the point where the open system is cost competitive on the initial purchase and it will play sufficiently attractive games, then the closed console systems will disappear (unless they want to give them away free, as per the M$ prediction, in that case I will pre order a few thousand for the parts).
No.
I think you have it the otherway around, the consoles are going to eventually canabalize all functions of the PC. Thus the goals of the consoles are for one of them to eventually win the home coputer OS war.
The PC's % of the game market has been stedily declining. In recent years even the raw numeric sales of PC games has declined too. If declining game sales is a sign of winning the console war, then the dreamcast must have won the last round since it's sales declined to almost 0.
that's a justification, which does not remove the fact that people who illegally distribute copyrighted material do not have the right (because of the copyright law) to do so. Period.
Canadians have every right to download the material. it's upload and redistribution which we do nto have the right for. This was because the canadian RIAA equivalent asked to put a tarrif on blank media and the Canaddians gov did so with the provision that it's legal to DL copy righted material.
The Adult entertainment industry is much smaller and less influential then most nerds believe. The 6+ bil adult insutry is a myth. World wide I'd be surprised if it weighed in at more then 1 bil. Most of the big numbers were quoted from forbes who quoted AVN who was doing an interview with porn enterpanier of moderate fame who threw out huge numbers he pulled out his ass.
They might have been a factor in the VHS/Beta wars but not the only one. And back int he 70's/80's the avenue for pornography were few so even the modest size of the industry might have been a background factor. But these days most porn hounds get more "bang" for their buck online. It will be a less compelling factor in this round of the format wars then in the one in the days of yore.
Items manufactured in mainland China almost never qualify as PRC or People's Republic of China, but rather as simply Made in China. As one is a democratic republic and the other is a communist state with capitalist leanings, I'd assume manufacturers would wish to avoid any confusion
On is a monolithic centralized government which is sure it knows best and will do what it wants to make it ahppen, and the other is a rough assortment of gansters who call themselves a government. Taiwan is much less tyranical but democracy != not evil. Almost every parliment member is a crime-boss in Taiwan. When they have interparty disputes they often degenerate into fist fights.
But I recall someone once saying the "average person" is 5' tall, female, and Chinese.
Average chinese male is 5'6", average female is 5'2". And there are more men in china then women. Also, chinese people have odd ideas of "face" and "rightousness" which ussually correspond to being stoic and not rocking the boat. The government reflects the majority of China in it's goals and ideals ussually. It works for them mostly. I am a Chinese born Canadian. Naturalized over 20 years. I visit often and everyone seems to be content, industrious, and tired. They are more aware of what goes on in the world then you would give them credit for, but some "facts" they know are obviously propaganda. Not much different then some of the "facts" Americans or canadians know. They believe Tibet was always china and some people were just making trouble. Just as Canadians beleive that we're plauralistic and tolerant and that racism is a small problem. Or American believe that anyone can strike it rich.
Unless, of course, the availability of abundant cheap energy leads to massive heat pollution of the atmosphere (rather than massive C02 pollution). There's an argument against everything (of course, there's also an argument FOR everything):)
Thats okay, We'll just buy some reactionless planet movers from a friendly nomad merchant race and move our plant progressively away from our sun. We'll be fine.
Ahh... I see you suggest modern nuclear power plants.
Did you know that archaic nuclear power plants produce a whole bunch of "unusable" nuclear "waste"? Further, every time we put in a new nuclear power plant a terrorist gets a weapon of mass destruction!
Although my sarcasm detector is deeply confused by your post, I'll hazard a reply anyways. A nuclear reactor can cause a large amount of damage but only slightly more then a standard gas/coal/oil power generation plant. Events like chernobyl were basically steam explosions when the operators purposely overode every failsafe for some reason. The major difference is a nuclear power plant is that after an accident, clean up takes longer. A modern reactor like a pebblebed or candu reactor would result in less nuclear waste and is even harder to have an accident occur.
Nuclear isn't "optional" is is the next most abundant fuel after the hydrocarbons are gone. So it's either now or later. You don't have a choice not to use it.
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And the climate scientists who created this report aren't idealogically motivated? I'm sure some are. Some probably aren't. And scientists who respond to the $10,000 bounty may or may not be motivated. Frankly, I don't care about motivations. If you put out a bounty for an open source project, no one gets upset. Why should this be any different? If the scientist trades his/her credibility to create a fraudalent attack on the climate report that's unethical, but the fault of the scientist - not the bounty. ANd I have no doubt the life of such accusations will be short-lived.
If ExonMobile itself wants to offer bounties for this research I really don't care. Let the scientists try to do the research. They will either come up with a valid criticis, or they won't.
It's more like offering a county for someone to code a Wifi driver with an obvious exploit and only paying if at least 1000 use the faulty driver.
On the third hand I mostly handle sales of phone products and that is a more accurate cross section. :)
What about Oblivion? Would you call that a B or C game? All the reviewers at metacritic seem to agree that it's an A game as I am sure you do. Both the Xbox360 and the PC versions, were single DVD releases. I doubt that the Blu-Ray PS3 version will look any better and possibly will even look worse (for other reasons of course).
Again get the PC version and pop in the 2048x2048 texture pack and some of the improved models to see what they sacraficed to get it onto 1 DVD. also the human forms are distintive but ugly as sin. It was the HDR and bloom effects that made it pretty but the models and texture were wretched out of the box. The hillsides titled because of the limited textures they used. 2048x2048 textures would have added another 400 megs to the disc so they used 512x512 instead and hid the difference under HDR and lighting effects.
Not to mention the anti-PC Apple advertising that is on the air right now. It's like a political contest - if you don't respond soon people will think the meme is true and stop buying PC's altogether. Particularly because A) Apple is attacking Vista head on and B) the commercials are really funny and easily likeable.
The only ones who pay attention to the apple ads are mac fanatics. To the rest of us multi system or Windows only users it's simply insultingly stupid segments that we ensure if we can't change the channel. I doubt there would be a tripple digit number of switchers due to those ads. They simply re-affirm the brand value mac fanatics already experience. Ask any random person what they think of a mac. The repsonses will vayr between "whats a mac" and "nice and shiny. but too expensive". Even thought they are one of the largest home computer manufacturers and the rpice has come to within a resonable margin of PC's. Just liek the "switch" campaign it does little to epxand marketshare.
Besides, I don't think you give consumers enough credit.
I work in customer service and tech support. I am aware of exactly how much credit I need to give them. Which is slightly more then my dog.
I doubt that anyone thinks 70mm film looks immenselybetter than DVDs. My DVDs already look just fine as far as im concerned, and I could probably only tell the difference between film and DVD if they were side by side. While 70mm is definetly better, I wouldnt say it is much better.
ummmm.. have you been to a theatre ever? how about seen a big screen? Imax? Just as any quality of mp3 is fine when the volume is low the difference appears when the volume is turned up. 11hz mp3s sound terrible at high volumes compared to 44hz bit just as 480p signals look terrible on a 50" TV compared to 790p or 1080p. On a large enough screen, the difference between 35mm and 70mm is obvious and huge.
You are missing my point.
I'm not saying games should not progress. What I am saying is their size should not be artificially increased.
If the same quality graphics, sound, and LENGTH of game are coming out on dvd9 as on blu-ray...well, you can finish the sentence.
Texture resolution makes a noticable difference. Try playing oblivion, then playing it with the 2048x2048 texture pack. Models are also important. More complciated models tend to look better. Often character models are created detailed then judiciously scaled down in polys to retain as much of the look as possible while preserving performance and space. Less details need to made up for in better textures or just better design. Compare the hands in FFXII and FFX. Bigger models require more space. Having more diverse enviroments require mroe space. FFXII has more background details then FFX, requiring more models and more space. All noticable changes that require space. 7.1 sound require 2 more sound channels then 5.1 also needing more space. Universal spoken text results in huge volumes of more space required.
In general, A-list games will balloon in size easily. B list and C list may still be unable to fill a single DVD, just due to less content. But more space means you have to make fewer trade offs.
So what you'll see in the future is that the Bluray vs. HD-DVD war won't matter. The real winner will be Internet ala carte providers, who give the consumers what they want, when they want it. Sony shouldn't fear HD-DVD. They should fear Apple iTunes.
Perhaps next generation. But for this revision of video delivery, there still a monolithic population of technology impaired with too much money and too few techno savy people. There is a lack of easy to use downloaded data to TV appliances. Easy to use being the key word. Your Ipod could do. But they are still not DVD player easy to use yet. VCRs and DVD players still partly confound the median consumer. perhaps in 25 years when the last inept boomer dies we may see itunes overtake disc media, but our geek fantasies of seeing everyone download their TV will be some time away.
The severe lack in innovation in video games today is caused by the game companies being tied to making games for the old, tried & true genres. These genres are now so full of titles that there is no longer any room for originality. Take the first person shooter (fps) genre. IT HAS BEEN DONE TO DEATH. There are so many fps games out there that you can choose any setting, play-style, weapons that you want to play with! And yet every time a new fps game comes out the developers try and call it innovative because it adds the tiniest of changes to the standard formula (such as rechargeable health bars Wooopie.) FPS IS DONE. many other genres have also been done to death as well such as: sports, racing, fantasy rpgs etc. There some genres that in my opinion are still open to a lot of expansion. Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) for one still have a long way to go. The game developers need to get off of making MMOs with elfs, dwarfs, and orcs and start putting some interesting stuff into the mix. How about being a cowboy or bandit on the wild west? or being a pirate on the open sea? just now we are starting to see some originality breath life into this genre.
There is the general 80:20 rule. 80% of everythign is complete and utter shit. The reamaining 20 is good to brilliant. Now when we look at anything new, we see that 80% of it is shit and we decry "ohh how bad industry X is". However the only reason we do so is we look back and we can only remember the 80% that wasn't shit. we conviently forget most fo the things before was shit too. We remember how great and fun Kings Quest was and forget how wrtched a lot of the point and clicks were. We remember the greatness of super mario but forget the hundred of generic side scrollers that occured after. We remember gems like MGS or FF6 and forget the pretenders like the tenchu's and Legend of legias. It isn't that the market is stagnant. It's the fact that you not only want innovation, but want innovation that doesn't suck 80% of the time. Most new ideas, and most old ideas are implemented like shit. Look at the starting lineups each of the three systems. There was 1 gem : 4 shits in general. 1 Zelda to 4 red steels. 1 resistance to 4 Cash Guns Chaos. ect... Now at certain times we hit a renasance where for soem happenstance of genetics or circumstance we get more the 20% good stuff. These are rare and far between.
In case of okami it was several factors, it has not been released in Europe yet, so the second biggest gaming market has been blatantly ignored. It should have gone multiplatform, the gaminc concept screams for a mouse or the wiimote, Playstation only was its death nail, while the playstation has a sheer number of consoles, its gamers are not too open minded and feel happy to be fed with Tony Hawk #19 also add to that the next gen hype going on which drowned everything. Probably if Okami would come out on the Wii now, it would get excellent additional sales, but as it seems the game is basically still drowned in brain dead marketing and release dates!
Gaming markets in order of market size:
Japan
US
UK
The rest of us.
Europe, if you include the UK, would still be #3. The US and Japanese markets are simply huge.
Bleh. The line that bothers me though isn't so much his thoughts that innovative games have no chance, but rather "Most video game people have read one book and seen one movie in their life, which is 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Aliens' or variations of that. There's great things in that, but you need some variety."
Which reads to me as bullshit of the first order, most of the gamers I know are geeks and geeks in general tend to be movie buffs and/or book readers. Those may well be two of their *favorite* icons but its not all they know.
He's just bringing up the fact that most movies/shows/books can be reduced to a few arch typical stories. The whole mono myth idea. For instance, almost everyone loves zelda. And it's story is? "young hero goes on quest to save a princess... slays a very evil bad guy... saves the world." Now lets see star wars. " young hero goes on quest to save a princess... slays a very evil bad guy... saves the world." or how about eragon, another young geek favorite "young hero goes on quest to save a princess... slays a very evil bad guy... saves the world." Slight variations in willow, the princess is younger. Dark crystal is somewhat in the same vein. LOTR just replace the quest otherwise similiar. ect...
Humans being are simply fairly unoriginal and are uncomfortable when things are too alien. We tend to find a certain pattern we enjoy and then play it with small variations. So long as it changes slightly we dont' get bored. If it changes too much, we decry how the creator raped our childhood.
TA was a niche geek game. It wasn't that great gameplay wise, it was ahead of it's time graphics wise. The strategies degenerated into swarming which mad it predictable and boring. No mater who you swarmed with it's the same strategy. Select all - attack. Little nauance, balanced only because the majority of the early and mid games units are the same. Also games lasted 1+ hours and defence was king encouraging all of the tactics RTS noobs like.
Like C&C you tended to optimize by swarming with mid level units (med tanks for C&C, for TA lotsa mid level bots, at least in all the games I ever witnessed.) You really couldn't attack early due to the comander. By the time you can take the cammander out boths sides have sizable defences. It was fun for a bit but eventually we got bored.
Likely the lack of publishers push was more responsible for it's lower sales though. Since C&C was broing int he exact same ways and sold well.
Does it seem like every day, Apple is seeming less like the good guy?
This isn't flamebait... (I love my Mac) its an observation that IMHO
over the past year Apple seems to have been far more agressive at implementing
"control" measures through legal means -- not as bad as MSFT, but a far cry f
rom the "We want everyone to love us" attitude of the past.
My question is: what changed? And is this the Apple of the future? Or
is this a result of some shift in management attitudes. (Or a case of
money and power corrupt, no matter who you are?)
Sorry to burst your bubble but Apple has never been the good guy, just the other guy. They are more innovative and do better work then their major competitor Microsoft but their business practices and control measures aren't new. Had they achieved the hegemony that Microsft has, I'd suspect Jobs and his boys would be breaking knee caps and killing kittens similiar to how Gates and the boys have. They were just as aggresive back in the 80's and Jobs is not a nice man. I suspect he's throw chairs too when faced with bad news. He's known for being an agressive business person and a dick. Nothing has changed, the nostalgia and jobs realty distortion field makes you think he must be the second coming.
Actually, I didn't say they shouldn't be allowed to. The OP asked a question, and I answered it. He asked what is wrong with pornography and I replied with the statements you have quoted about people demeaning themselves. I didn't make any statements about what people should be allowed or not allowed to do. The fact that people make a choice to participate in a given behavior doesn't lessen the harm it does to them.
I used to work on the support side of the adult industry. Working as a tech, webmaster and video editor. Let me say that the individuals that end up in porn aren't "hurt" by porn. They are by no means perfect people. They all have some issue or other and often aren't exactly the definition of "together" They are often strippers. They are often in this profession because they like to party and find this the easiest ways to get the money to continue to do so. Some are truly exploited. These girls have a BF that encourages them to get into stripping and the rest of it. Others are strong women who do it because they have no other skills and happen to look nice. For some it's something extra to make rent. They are generally messed up people to start with, so a little filmed action doesn't make it better or worse.
How often have you seen someone in a porn film use a condom or say "I love you"?
About as often as a slashdoter has used a condom and heard "i love you"?
How big is Canada's bloc of religious wackos who think anything sexual is so horrible it needs to be banned? I'm hoping it's significantly smaller than it is in the US so that this excellent example of free speech will hold up as something for America to follow.
I live in the middle of the largest bloc of "wackos", work for the company in question. The wackos are mostly harmless and get pummelled into submission by the minorities and liberal press. Our "conservative wackos" would problably pass as "democrats" in the states.
Are you sure? IMHO, it's equivalent to saying that CSI / TV-Drama's replicates what happens in real life in the real world, but in a more exagerrated way.. And by exagerrated, you would know what I mean. O wait,.. this is slashdot.....
IMHO, I find these morals good in a sense that I would prefer living in area where such good morals are upheld than in one where it isn't. It brings a sense of protection for me, my family, etc
I miss the point of the first sentence. CSI is to crime investigation as Porn is to sex. Both are fake replicas that stress quick umm.. resolution over the truth behind normal situations.
IMHO, areas of strict morality only hide the vices better. Strict morality does not generally make you a better person. For each giving and self sacraficing "moral" person there is a dozen hippocritical, hateful "moral" person. Ditto for the Immoral.
Well, except for the fact that it demeans women (and men for that matter), cheapens and turns a God-given gift into a commodity, reduces human beings from being to people to be loved and honored to being objects and tools for one's one self-gratification-- not much I guess.
Are you talking about pornography or labor. I get confused about the difference....
Personally I see the winning game console being a PC. With the falling cost of high performance hardware getting to the point where the open system is cost competitive on the initial purchase and it will play sufficiently attractive games, then the closed console systems will disappear (unless they want to give them away free, as per the M$ prediction, in that case I will pre order a few thousand for the parts).
No.
I think you have it the otherway around, the consoles are going to eventually canabalize all functions of the PC. Thus the goals of the consoles are for one of them to eventually win the home coputer OS war.
The PC's % of the game market has been stedily declining. In recent years even the raw numeric sales of PC games has declined too. If declining game sales is a sign of winning the console war, then the dreamcast must have won the last round since it's sales declined to almost 0.
that's a justification, which does not remove the fact that people who illegally distribute copyrighted material do not have the right (because of the copyright law) to do so. Period.
Canadians have every right to download the material. it's upload and redistribution which we do nto have the right for. This was because the canadian RIAA equivalent asked to put a tarrif on blank media and the Canaddians gov did so with the provision that it's legal to DL copy righted material.
The Adult entertainment industry is much smaller and less influential then most nerds believe. The 6+ bil adult insutry is a myth. World wide I'd be surprised if it weighed in at more then 1 bil. Most of the big numbers were quoted from forbes who quoted AVN who was doing an interview with porn enterpanier of moderate fame who threw out huge numbers he pulled out his ass.
They might have been a factor in the VHS/Beta wars but not the only one. And back int he 70's/80's the avenue for pornography were few so even the modest size of the industry might have been a background factor. But these days most porn hounds get more "bang" for their buck online. It will be a less compelling factor in this round of the format wars then in the one in the days of yore.
Items manufactured in mainland China almost never qualify as PRC or People's Republic of China, but rather as simply Made in China. As one is a democratic republic and the other is a communist state with capitalist leanings, I'd assume manufacturers would wish to avoid any confusion
On is a monolithic centralized government which is sure it knows best and will do what it wants to make it ahppen, and the other is a rough assortment of gansters who call themselves a government. Taiwan is much less tyranical but democracy != not evil. Almost every parliment member is a crime-boss in Taiwan. When they have interparty disputes they often degenerate into fist fights.
But I recall someone once saying the "average person" is 5' tall, female, and Chinese.
Average chinese male is 5'6", average female is 5'2". And there are more men in china then women. Also, chinese people have odd ideas of "face" and "rightousness" which ussually correspond to being stoic and not rocking the boat. The government reflects the majority of China in it's goals and ideals ussually. It works for them mostly. I am a Chinese born Canadian. Naturalized over 20 years. I visit often and everyone seems to be content, industrious, and tired. They are more aware of what goes on in the world then you would give them credit for, but some "facts" they know are obviously propaganda. Not much different then some of the "facts" Americans or canadians know. They believe Tibet was always china and some people were just making trouble. Just as Canadians beleive that we're plauralistic and tolerant and that racism is a small problem. Or American believe that anyone can strike it rich.
Unless, of course, the availability of abundant cheap energy leads to massive heat pollution of the atmosphere (rather than massive C02 pollution). There's an argument against everything (of course, there's also an argument FOR everything) :)
Thats okay, We'll just buy some reactionless planet movers from a friendly nomad merchant race and move our plant progressively away from our sun. We'll be fine.
Ahh... I see you suggest modern nuclear power plants.
Did you know that archaic nuclear power plants produce a whole bunch of "unusable" nuclear "waste"? Further, every time we put in a new nuclear power plant a terrorist gets a weapon of mass destruction!
Although my sarcasm detector is deeply confused by your post, I'll hazard a reply anyways. A nuclear reactor can cause a large amount of damage but only slightly more then a standard gas/coal/oil power generation plant. Events like chernobyl were basically steam explosions when the operators purposely overode every failsafe for some reason. The major difference is a nuclear power plant is that after an accident, clean up takes longer. A modern reactor like a pebblebed or candu reactor would result in less nuclear waste and is even harder to have an accident occur.
Nuclear isn't "optional" is is the next most abundant fuel after the hydrocarbons are gone. So it's either now or later. You don't have a choice not to use it.