Well, you didn't HAVE to shoot all the civilians. My first run-through I shot none, just to see what happened. I shot an awful lot of airport signs. My second run-through, I shot the hell out of everyone. Since then, I just skip that scene.
I liked this book. I'm not big on religion but a previous boss, who enjoyed debating philosophy and occasionally his religious beliefs, gave me a copy. It was an interesting read.
"WHEN I was a boy in Tibet, I felt that my own Buddhist religion must be the best — and that other faiths were somehow inferior. Now I see how naïve I was, and how dangerous the extremes of religious intolerance can be today."
Honestly, it wouldn't be much better than current text-to-speech. The problem isn't the computer voice...sure, its cheesy but I could get used to that. The problem is everything else. The phrasing, the intonation, the flow of the words. These are things that make TTS laughable. A database of some voice actor reading every word in the language wouldn't help this at all.
Thats easily done with iTunes and probably other media organizers/whatever. I add "FullAlbum" to the comment field for those songs/albums. Rather than use iTunes Shuffle feature I then have a smart playlist that filters out FullAlbum songs and other stuff I don't want showing up randomly. I use that playlist as a base for my other playlists and when I feel like Shuffle, I just set the main playlist to random. its not perfect, but it works.
Text to speech absolutely sucks. I have a Kindle. The text to speech is horrible. What audiobooks are you listening to that aren't much better than automation? The only audiobook I've listened to (I drive a lot for work) that I thought was horrible was "Jarhead" which was read by the author (usually a bad idea). It was bad enough that I only listened to the first chapter or two....but it was still leaps and bounds better than the best text to speech I've heard.
I'm sure the publishers are worried about improvements in technology eventually bringing the quality of TTS to levels where it could compete with professional audiobooks, but we're a long, long way from that.
To quote Neil Gaiman (fabulous author and a damn good book reader, too) talking about the Author's Guild trying to clamp down on TTS in the Kindle:
"When you buy a book, you're also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one's going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors' societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what's good about them with it. "
Oh, I do think its interesting, too. The first study I mentioned got me all geared up to say "Hey, this is just common sense...but theres no proof the effect lasts longer the the time playing the game. Then I read the second one.;}"
I've only read the paper from the scienceblogs.de site so far, but aren't these results exactly what you'd expect? They discovered that people who play violent video games have a physiological response and higher aggression levels after playing the violent video game than before. Isn't this obvious? Isn't the _point_ of a game or a movie to cause some type of emotional reaction to the player or viewer? That the change from baseline increases as the amount of blood in the game increases also isn't surprising. As immersion is increased by additional, visual in this case, cues so does the player's response.
It would have been much more interesting if the researchers had done another aggression questionnaire several hours after the game session was over. While its no surprise that immediate state aggression levels and heart-rate had increased immediately after playing the game I'd be surprised if there was a significant increase in aggression levels after some time...and isn't that what the Jack Thompson's of the world are claiming?
In my experience, I _know_ that playing COD4 or Counter Strike will increase my heart rate. I'd assume that the amount of "realism" (blood, cries of the wounded, etc) would have an impact on that. I know that if I'm getting my ass handed to me on a particular night I'll get frustrated and curse at the computer showing higher levels of aggression than normal. I also believe (I don't know, and neither do the researchers because they only measured the aggression levels pre-game and immediately after the game) that by the time I wander down to the kitchen to grab a soda and come back to the game I no longer feel frustrated and I doubt I'd have any higher levels of aggression.
So...the study found that people have a reaction to a game while playing it...well, that seems to be the whole point of the game.
Ok. So I've now read the Washington Post article too (WTF, I'm actually reading articles???). This one claims that there is a significant increase in hostility several months after exposure to violent video games in children and adolescents. They didn't link to the actual study so we can't examine the methodology but lets give the researchers the benefit of the doubt and assume it was a well controlled study (the article says they controlled for gender and previous aggressive behavior). I'd be interested in knowing if and how they controlled for continued violent video game (and movies or other violent media) exposure during the intervening period but, again, lets assume they did. I guess this isn't all that surprising, either. Aggressive behaviour is, obviously, behavior...and behavior is learned. Schools and parents are using video games to teach a wide variety of things, it shouldn't surprise anyone that non-educational games are teaching kids as well. The Minnesota study used kids ages 9-12 and measured aggression by whether the kids got in fights at school or if their teacher reported them as having physically aggressive behaviors. The Japanese studies used kids 12-18 but the article doesn't indicate how they measured aggression. It would be interesting to see the results based on age ranges because my assumption would be that the older you get the less long-lasting impact would be displayed.
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For all intensive purposes, the OP was correct irregardless of what you think. I could care less but its his perogative which to use.
Well, you didn't HAVE to shoot all the civilians. My first run-through I shot none, just to see what happened. I shot an awful lot of airport signs. My second run-through, I shot the hell out of everyone. Since then, I just skip that scene.
I thought we were the Godless Liberal Bleeding-Heart Peacenik Eco-terrorist Jihadist Martyrdom Brigade?
I liked this book. I'm not big on religion but a previous boss, who enjoyed debating philosophy and occasionally his religious beliefs, gave me a copy. It was an interesting read.
Excellent point. From the linked article:
"WHEN I was a boy in Tibet, I felt that my own Buddhist religion must be the best — and that other faiths were somehow inferior. Now I see how naïve I was, and how dangerous the extremes of religious intolerance can be today."
To keep them extra fresh and crisp-a-licious between bites.
I am one of those unaware people. Got a link?
Don't go making me laugh while I'm trying to be righteously indignant. ;)
Thanks for deciding for the rest of us, prick.
Obviously the people that "did the work" wanted Ubuntu to look like Win 7. No questions are being begged. THEY wanted it.
Honestly, it wouldn't be much better than current text-to-speech. The problem isn't the computer voice...sure, its cheesy but I could get used to that. The problem is everything else. The phrasing, the intonation, the flow of the words. These are things that make TTS laughable. A database of some voice actor reading every word in the language wouldn't help this at all.
And you'd be wrong. And living in the nostalgia-fueled culture of the baby boomers. Ain't it great?
God Monkey Robot
But what if there were no rules in place to limit scalping?
Minnesota repealed scalping laws about 3 years ago. I haven't noticed much disturbance.
Usually about 5 minutes worth.
Thats easily done with iTunes and probably other media organizers/whatever. I add "FullAlbum" to the comment field for those songs/albums. Rather than use iTunes Shuffle feature I then have a smart playlist that filters out FullAlbum songs and other stuff I don't want showing up randomly. I use that playlist as a base for my other playlists and when I feel like Shuffle, I just set the main playlist to random. its not perfect, but it works.
Oh, completely agree with this. I don't want sound effects or guys trying to sound like women or vice versa. Just read the damn book. ;)
Text to speech absolutely sucks. I have a Kindle. The text to speech is horrible. What audiobooks are you listening to that aren't much better than automation? The only audiobook I've listened to (I drive a lot for work) that I thought was horrible was "Jarhead" which was read by the author (usually a bad idea). It was bad enough that I only listened to the first chapter or two....but it was still leaps and bounds better than the best text to speech I've heard.
I'm sure the publishers are worried about improvements in technology eventually bringing the quality of TTS to levels where it could compete with professional audiobooks, but we're a long, long way from that.
To quote Neil Gaiman (fabulous author and a damn good book reader, too) talking about the Author's Guild trying to clamp down on TTS in the Kindle:
"When you buy a book, you're also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one's going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors' societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what's good about them with it. "
Maybe he just wanted to provide the Keep It Simple and was hoping you'd provide the Stupid?
Yeah, but Day 1 had to end eventually.
But at least he'll know.
Oh, I do think its interesting, too. The first study I mentioned got me all geared up to say "Hey, this is just common sense...but theres no proof the effect lasts longer the the time playing the game. Then I read the second one. ;}"
I've only read the paper from the scienceblogs.de site so far, but aren't these results exactly what you'd expect? They discovered that people who play violent video games have a physiological response and higher aggression levels after playing the violent video game than before. Isn't this obvious? Isn't the _point_ of a game or a movie to cause some type of emotional reaction to the player or viewer? That the change from baseline increases as the amount of blood in the game increases also isn't surprising. As immersion is increased by additional, visual in this case, cues so does the player's response.
It would have been much more interesting if the researchers had done another aggression questionnaire several hours after the game session was over. While its no surprise that immediate state aggression levels and heart-rate had increased immediately after playing the game I'd be surprised if there was a significant increase in aggression levels after some time...and isn't that what the Jack Thompson's of the world are claiming?
In my experience, I _know_ that playing COD4 or Counter Strike will increase my heart rate. I'd assume that the amount of "realism" (blood, cries of the wounded, etc) would have an impact on that. I know that if I'm getting my ass handed to me on a particular night I'll get frustrated and curse at the computer showing higher levels of aggression than normal. I also believe (I don't know, and neither do the researchers because they only measured the aggression levels pre-game and immediately after the game) that by the time I wander down to the kitchen to grab a soda and come back to the game I no longer feel frustrated and I doubt I'd have any higher levels of aggression.
So...the study found that people have a reaction to a game while playing it...well, that seems to be the whole point of the game.
Ok. So I've now read the Washington Post article too (WTF, I'm actually reading articles???). This one claims that there is a significant increase in hostility several months after exposure to violent video games in children and adolescents. They didn't link to the actual study so we can't examine the methodology but lets give the researchers the benefit of the doubt and assume it was a well controlled study (the article says they controlled for gender and previous aggressive behavior). I'd be interested in knowing if and how they controlled for continued violent video game (and movies or other violent media) exposure during the intervening period but, again, lets assume they did. I guess this isn't all that surprising, either. Aggressive behaviour is, obviously, behavior...and behavior is learned. Schools and parents are using video games to teach a wide variety of things, it shouldn't surprise anyone that non-educational games are teaching kids as well. The Minnesota study used kids ages 9-12 and measured aggression by whether the kids got in fights at school or if their teacher reported them as having physically aggressive behaviors. The Japanese studies used kids 12-18 but the article doesn't indicate how they measured aggression. It would be interesting to see the results based on age ranges because my assumption would be that the older you get the less long-lasting impact would be displayed.
Except the French.
Except this wasn't a vote. Thanks for playing, though.